HAMLET — Police are poring over security footage, looking for a gunman who shot up a home in the Hamlet Housing Authority on Tuesday night.
One woman and two small children were in the home, and two men were walking toward it when the shooting started at just before 8 p.m., Police Chief Scott Waters said Wednesday. The men couldn’t open the door and had to run to a neighbor’s to escape the bullets, he said.
Police have determined a “person of interest” in the shooting and are looking through Housing Authority recordings to see whether he was in the area when the incident occurred.
“I would like for them to see that (in the paper),” said Detective Lt. Richard Jordan, who is investigating the case.
Neither the victims nor neighbors reported seeing a shooter, police said. The female victim lives in the home shot at; one of the men also lives in the complex.
Officers recovered five .40-caliber Smith & Wesson shell casings and one bullet, the report said. The address of the recovery site is across the street from the home.
The shooter put two holes through the wall of the home — one passed through, shattering a flat-screen TV — as well as one bullet each through a metal door and a screen door, and one into the hood of a Hyundai Accent parked on the street outside the home with its hood raised.
Charges awaiting the culprit are assault with a deadly weapon, discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling and injury to real property.
Police estimated damage at $1,700.
Waters said he was thankful no one was injured — especially the children — but warned that “something’s brewing” because the level of violence seems to be mounting in town.
On Wednesday afternoon, Hamlet officers responded to two reports of men fighting but found nothing at either site. One report said the men appeared to “possibly have guns.”
Detective Capt. Randy Dover has attributed the rash of shootings — as well as graffiti on buildings, street signs and streets — since the summer of 2016 to gang activity.
An officer was shot at back in August and the city cancelled its Fourth of July festivities last year due to threats of retaliation following the June 28 murder of 20-year-old Tierrell Martin at the Circle B convenience store.
No arrests have been made in Martin’s shooting and a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the culprit was doubled to $1,000 earlier this month.
