Bullets piercing homes and cars: A growing, lethal hazard in Charlotte

It was just before midnight Tuesday, Sept. 7. Black and white video shows two cars stop along the 2400 block of Richard Rozzelle Drive, a dead-end residential street of few trees and newer, tightly packed two-story homes.

Four people hop out. A fifth stays in a car. Within 10 seconds, they raise guns and unload nearly 150 rounds into a home. Asiah Figueroa, a 3-year-old sleeping inside, was shot and killed. A bullet grazed Asiah’s 4-year-old sister. Nine others were in the house but unharmed.

Many Charlotte residents were shocked by the horrifying spectacle captured on a home surveillance camera. But such assaults are not rare in Charlotte.

Since 2017, police have investigated more than 3,200 cases of people firing guns into occupied buildings or vehicles, an Observer analysis of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police data found. That’s nearly two per day. Fourteen people have died from these assaults so far this year.

Some people live with this lethal hazard much more than others. Residents most at risk live in neighborhoods bordering Interstate 85 just west or north of uptown, the paper’s investigation found.

These shootings have increased in recent years, data show. Last year, police reported more than 900 of them. That’s a 47% increase since 2019 and an 88% increase from 2017.

This year is on pace to be nearly as violent.

Many attacks are linked to disputes. But Charlotte residents with no connection to those firing guns get hurt or killed too, taking a huge toll on families.

Denise Russell was asleep in her apartment in the Toddville Road neighborhood just north of Charlotte Douglas International Airport last July when a bullet flew through her window and struck her leg, a shocking injury she is still recovering from.

Neither she nor the police know who fired the gun.

“They have no clue,” said the 51-year-old woman who has not been able to return to her job at the airport since she was struck. Her best hunch, she said, is that young people who live nearby were arguing and someone picked up a gun.

“This has to stop because I could’ve lost my life that night,” she said.

Local experts see multiple reasons for why the shootings have increased. And a growing number of organizations are focused on the threat, although no one claims to know how to stop it.

Shootings: A public health threat

Experts increasingly recognize gun violence as a public health threat, one whose origins and prevention were scarcely studied due to one-time limits on federally funded research, according to the American Public Health Association. That is changing.

“We certainly look at gun violence like a disease,” said Tracie Campbell, senior health manager for Mecklenburg County’s Office of Violence Prevention. “It spreads. It’s treatable, and it’s preventable. We have to look at what those root causes are so we can stop putting Band-Aids on the problem.”

Last summer, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police grew concerned enough to sound an alarm, pointing to the rise in shootings into occupied properties and the dangers residents face.

On April 29, on Statesville Road in north Charlotte, bullets burst through a Lexus carrying three people, including a 3-year-old. That assault stemmed from a fight among women, police said, with two people arrested.

Two days later, on May 1, bullets penetrated a home on a small street off I-85. Four adults and an infant were inside. The man charged in that case fired a gun after a fight, police said.

Less than a month later, on May 31, unknown individuals aimed their guns at a two-story home near Old Statesville Road, striking and killing Sherilyn “Alicia” Drew, who was in the house.

Drew was a rising senior biology major at Georgia State University, who was home visiting family when she died. The shooters, police said, had intended to target a different house.

Many questions, few answers

Shootings into buildings and vehicles can stem from something as minor as feeling disrespected on social media or owing someone a few bucks, said Rob Tufano, CMPD spokesman.

Sometimes they’re the result of drug deals gone wrong or gang members retaliating against someone, said Derek Sanchez, a patrol officer.

“Bullets are just flying everywhere,” Sanchez said. “They’re going into houses that aren’t even involved. And there are victims, like these young ones — 5 and below — who are affected by this.”

In addition to the 14 killings linked to shootings into occupied buildings and vehicles so far this year, 115 people were shot but survived.

The shooters in these attacks usually fire handguns. That’s what happened in more than 1,700 cases since 2017 in which police identified the weapons used.

According to CMPD records, 1,252 guns were reported stolen from Jan. 1 through Sept. 30 of this year — up 23% from that period last year. More than half of this year’s stolen guns were taken from vehicles, records show.

It’s possible some of those guns are used in violent crimes, Tufano said.

“It ain’t adults with these guns,” said Frank Byers, former head of the Greater Enderly Park Neighborhood Association. “These kids … with the alcohol and drugs, when you put that all together you’re going to have a lot of killing and a lot of shooting.”

Of the 165 people arrested in association with shooting into occupied property this year, 42% were between the ages of 18 and 24, CMPD data show. Ninety percent were Black.

An often invisible cause of the problem is untreated trauma among people doing the shooting, said Stacey Butler, who heads the county’s Child Development-Community Policing program.

Specifically that’s trauma from experiencing or seeing violence, which leads to a reduced capacity to handle stress, she said.

“Rarely do you find people who hurt others who are not traumatized,” Butler said.

Add the COVID-19 pandemic, which dismantled social, educational and criminal justice programs, and everyday hardships, such as poverty and housing instability, and it’s not a surprise shootings have increased, said Maj. Ryan Butler, who heads CMPD’s Crime Gun Suppression Team.

“This is not a police department issue, a DA issue”, Butler said, referring to the district attorney lawyers who prosecute criminal cases. “This is an entire community issue.”

Living with a lethal hazard

Living in a neighborhood plagued by these shootings takes a toll, say people too familiar with the sound of gunfire.

Just north of uptown, the Lincoln Heights and Oaklawn neighborhoods reported a combined 84 shootings into occupied properties since 2017, the Observer found.

West of uptown, the Thomasboro-Hoskins area had 108 shootings — the most of any neighborhood.

West Charlotte’s Enderly Park had 86 and registered the city’s second most shootings into occupied properties per square mile since 2017, data show.

Last year, 19-year-old Brianna Sue Stephenson died there after being shot several times inside her car.

“People are afraid,” said Elaine Asbury, pastor of Whole Armor of God Ministry, a house-turned-church with about 30 regular members.

The church sits on Avalon Avenue, just north of Freedom Drive and east of I-85.

Avalon Avenue is a narrow street in the heart of Enderly Park. It’s lined with open lots, apartments built in the 1960s and single-family homes valued as low as $80,000, according to Mecklenburg County property records.

Signs reading “Private property” and “No loitering. No Alcohol. No drugs” hang on trees or the sides of buildings.

In recent years, people have fired guns into three homes or vehicles within blocks of the church, data show. In all, 13 attacks occurred on a half-mile stretch of Avalon Avenue.

In 2017 a gunman fired nine shots at a house. Two bullets entered the home, a police report states.

A year later, directly across from the church, a man was charged with shooting into an occupied property, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, kidnapping and other gun and drug charges, records show.

Drug dealing — a crime police associate with shootings — is a problem in the area, Asbury said. Since 2017, CMPD has reported more than 260 drug violations within a mile of the church, the Observer found.

Byers lives just around the corner from Avalon Avenue, where the Whole Armor of God Ministry sits. He was outside the Bette Rae Thomas Recreation Center on Tuckaseegee Road on a recent Monday when three shots rang out a couple blocks away.

It was 3:45 p.m.

About 20 minutes later CMPD officers arrived. And five minutes after that, the department’s helicopter hovered overhead.

“All the time, all through the night,” Byers, 65, said of the gunfire. “A lot of times I get up at 4 o’clock in the morning and walk on my porch, and I hear gunshots all through the neighborhood. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!”

Walking to his home about a block away, Byers pointed to an intersection where he said a man he did not know threatened him and accused him of being a police snitch. He then gestured to the nearby sidewalk where his then-13-year-old son had a gun shoved under his chin.

Byers pulled two bullets out of his pocket – one spent and one live. An AT&T worker found them by the side of Byers’ house, he said. He has no idea where they came from, though he suspects they were left by a neighbor who likes to fire off rounds between the houses.

“Man, I just pray and hope he don’t be aiming that thing this way,” Byers said.