JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — People living on Thiervy Drive on Jacksonville’s Westside have described their street as quiet, until around 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said there was a non-life-threatening, domestic shooting between two men at the time, but people living around them, like Rex Hull, tell us they felt a threat to their lives.
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<
“It was a nightmare, it was scary, something I never want to live through again,” said Hull, “it could have been bad.”
Hull told us he had heard some loud arguing between a man and his father next door while he was watching TV on Wednesday night. But in a matter of moments, he said he was down on the ground.
“All of a sudden I heard a bang, I hesitated, then I heard bang, bang, and like 30 shots back to back to back,” Hull said.
Hull said he called 911 shortly after the shooting started and, once police had arrived, he looked outside and noticed the driver’s side window of his RV had a bullet hole in it.
“It was hectic. There were police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, and they had the whole street taped off and blocked off. Nobody could come either way,” said Hull.
Action News Jax went to the street and found multiple homes, apart from Hull’s, with bullet holes. One house had a hole in the front window where a bullet had flown through, along with a bullet hole in the front door.
[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]
One woman, who asked to be anonymous, said her mother-in-law’s home had been shot as many as 20 times. She said she was visiting her mother-in-law and had been sitting outside just a few minutes before she’d started driving away, when the gunfire started.
“If we would have been there, probably five minutes longer, we all would have been hit with the bullets,” she said, “my mother-in-law is scared to death that [the shooter] will get out.”
JSO records show there have been 35 reports of assault, aggravated assault, and weapons violations in this neighborhood since the start of this year. But Hull and other neighbors tell us they have never had strong safety concerns until now.
“We look out for one another, take care of each other, help each other out,” said Hull, “but this was a first, definitely a scary way to ring in the new year.”
Neighbors did give Action News Jax the name of the man they claim to be the shooter. We found someone with the same name and description in the Duval County jail log, but we are still working to confirm the identities of everyone involved with the police.
JSO said nobody was seriously hurt in this shooting, but the agency told us it can’t share more information about what happened right now, since this is an active investigation.
[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]
