12 shot, 1 killed in Hampton Roads
HAMPTON ROADS, Va. – Seemingly never-ending gun violence swept almost every town on Hampton Roads over the weekend.
There were three separate triple shootings, one double shooting and one murder. A total of 12 people were shot.
The violence began at 1am on Saturday 14 January in Suffolk. Police said three people were shot near the High Tide restaurant on Commerce Street. Two people were found at the scene with serious gunshot wounds. The third person was taken to the hospital.
Suffolk Police are also investigating a second triple shooting on Old College Drive. They said three women were shot dead after a fight that broke out around 12:30 p.m. Monday morning.
A man who lives a few doors down from where the shooting took place said he heard about four to five gunshots.
“It didn’t sound like a real gun at first,” said the neighbor, who asked not to be identified. “Sounded [like] a muffled sound and later pop, pop.”
Two of these women were hospitalized in critical condition. The third victim of the shooting walked up the College Drive highway to Kickback Jacks for help.
“That’s sad. That’s sad,” he said. “I didn’t believe it.”
The third triple shooting happened around 4:02 a.m. on Sunday, January 15 in Portsmouth. Police said three men were injured in the 2200 block of Rodman Avenue.
News 3 Reporter Antoinette DelBel spoke to a woman named Rachel who has been living on the street for almost three years. She did not want to give her last name. She said the gunshots woke her up.
“It was like 3:30, 4 a.m. and I woke up to probably four or five gunshots,” Rachel said. “Then I heard people screaming and running across my yard, down the street and cars speeding away.”
Rachel lives near a club called the House of Bertha Entertainment where she believes the shooting erupted.
“It was scary,” she said. “Didn’t really know what to do or what was going on.”
A double shooting erupted in Norfolk less than an hour later. Around 4:40 a.m. Sunday, police said two men were killed after a shooting on Colonial Ave. and W. 27th St. were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
Hampton Police are searching for the suspect they say saw a man in a 1st floor parking lotSt Block of County Street in the Phoebus area at 5:56 p.m. Sunday.
Police later identified the murder victim as Joshua Scriven, 19, of Hampton.
“It’s been very discouraging from Newport News, Hampton, Suffolk over the last two weeks and especially this weekend,” said Portsmouth Community Activist Barry Randall.
Randall believes the pandemic has caused a lot of pent-up frustration for many people, especially young people who don’t know how to manage their emotions.
“I don’t think we have people who wake up in the morning and say, ‘Hey, let me see who I can kill today,'” Randall said. “We have people who don’t know how to deal with conflict resolution; who don’t know how to respect and treat each other like that.”
Randall said there are some solutions to curbing gun violence, one of which is getting involved in your community. He said people could sit in a civic league or start a neighborhood watch group.
Meanwhile, police have no suspects in any of the shootings. They do not post updates on the condition of the shooting victims.
