On Thursday we reported on a shooting incident that occurred in the embattled area of East Collet Canal. In that event, Jonathan Faber fired five shots at Mark Medina who was walking through Martinez Alley at the time. But while the shots missed their intended target, averting what could have been another shoot em up statistic, it came very close to hitting one unintended victim. While many would be content to leave the gunners to shoot at each other - in this urban warfare there's always someone innocent in between the targets. We found out that these days on East Canal, good fortune can mean just staying alive, when you're dodging bullets with someone else's name on them:
Indira Craig reporting,
This morning when Joyce Gill, known to most as aunt Joyce, led us on a tour of her home. It looked like a war zone - bullet holes are scattered across the house - and it's left the 82 year old shaken.
Joyce Gill
I feel worried, frightened, scary, the word not to mention.
Indira Craig
The drama that's left this longtime resident of East Canal so shaken, unfolded on Wednesday morning at about 8:30. Aunt Joyce was just having breakfast when she received an overseas call from her daughter in the states who was concerned about all the recent shootings in the neighborhood. She was in the middle of her conversation when she and her son Edwin had to duck for cover as the very familiar sound of gun shots rang through her home.
Joyce Gill
Well Edwin start to talk to me then and tell me must give him the money to go and buy the shoulder steak for me at the meat shop. I tell him to wait. She said why Edwin hurrying you like that. Every time I talking to you some obstruction. While she said obstruction at that same time, the bullet starts, bow! bow! bow! She said..oh! my god! I am going to call you later.
Indira Craig
Aunt Joyce said that she heard gunshots piercing the back fence of her yard and quickly went to see where the gunshots were coming from. She saw what she prayed she would never have to face as bullet holes had riddled her fence, her vat and also inside of her home. Visible holes on the inside walls, door and bed mattress gave a clear indication of what would have resulted if her daughter hadn't happened to have called at the right time.
Joyce Gill
Well I'd be a dead duck and also my son Edwin that was going in the alley to buy the meat cause it's the same direction and the same window that I would look at is where the gunshot is. That phone call saved my life and saved Edwin's life. Then she would be coming home for two funerals, to bury a mother and a son.
Indira Craig
It's a situation that has Aunt Joyce broken up as the place she calls home for the past eighty years, and her shelter from the outside world clearly is neither safe nor comfortable anymore.
Joyce Gill
It make me feel uncomfortable, I am not safe not even in the house. I don't know what I will do cause even in my bed room that I take my fifteen minutes rest I can't go now, I don't go anymore. I sit in the chair in my kitchen. I would never look through that window again.
Indira Craig
And as long as the violence continues and the area remains a war zone not even behind close doors will these neighborhood residents be safe.
And it appears that neighborhood residents will have to all make adjustments as the end to the violence seems to be nowhere in sight. Just one day after that shooting incident Alex O'brien and Terrence Bailey were both victims of a drive by shooting. In that incident, Sheldon "Pinky" Tillett was arrested for murder, use of deadly means of harm and dangerous harm.
Producer: Jules Vasquez
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