Gunshots rang out like dynamite on Aloe Vera Street in the Martin's area after 10:00 last night. While no one was killed, 5 men who were socializing were hit. All the victims are neighbors and they can usually be found hanging out together. And now their families want to know whether they were ambushed and by who. Courtney Menzies went to the scene today. Here is that story.
Five men were rushed to the hospital last night after a gunman fired indiscriminately into a crowd on Aloe Vera Street. 29 year old James Young Jr, 18 year old Jermaine Smart, 34 year old Douglas Gill, 34 year old Lismo Williams, and 20 year old Aristotle Hughes were socializing on the side of the street, as they normally do, when two men arrived by boat. They began firing towards the group, but no one was fatally injured.
Hughes' mother told us the scene she met afterwards.
Voice of: Marie Gibson, Mother of Shooting Victim
"All I know that they came, shoot up, they came from through the alleyway here, they came on a boat, two of them came on foot, when they reached in, they started bursting shots. When they finished, they ran right back through the alleyway, jumped in the boat and they went up the river."
"My next son was holding him from around his neck to stop the bleeding because he got shot in his neck because he came from around the lane, from around my neighbor's lane up so because he ran too when he saw the gunman to try and take cover and for them to not chase him so he ran around the lane but he got a little shot in his back because he has a little whole and he got graze in his neck."
"I was traumatized, I was frightened because we just left from out here. I don't know what's happening. My sons were just hanging out there and people just came like, come on, I don't know what's happening."
Gibson said that her son isn't a troublemaker and rather than go out, he's normally at that spot with others from their neighborhood. She added that the gunmen could have taken innocent lives.
Voice of: Marie Gibson, Mother of Shooting Victim
"My sons aren't in any gangs, they're sea boys. My son that they shot, he doesn't even hand out, his name, when you hear his name, it's rare because he isn't in the system because he doesn't gang bang, he doesn't hang out, he doesn't even like problems, he's quiet, but just because his brothers are hanging out with their friends and he's hanging out with them and they were drinking and they were hanging out so he came and hung out with them too. And he caught in that with them."
"Everyday, my son is always at my neighbor right down the street. Like one, two, three houses. So they know one another, they grow up watching one another growing up so they don't mind hanging and chilling because they don't know that anybody will do that to them."
"They weren't worrying about who was around, they just came to do what they had to do and run gone. They don't know about innocent because. And the next thing too is because those little babies could have been out there and they could have shot those babies. Because my bra lee's son, my son, my little 7 year old, we had to tell them to come inside, lucky thing we told them to come inside because if they were down the street and those gunmen came they could have caught the babies."
And Gibson also pointed out that the police weren't as active last night as they usually are in the neighborhood.
Voice of: Marie Gibson, Mother of Shooting Victim
"Every minute you used to see them patrolling, every minute, sometimes two or three trucks pass every minute but last night, none at all. And it's because those guys were there long standing and drinking, probably from evening and not a trooper passed and the couple days before that you could know the troopers passing every 5 or 10 minutes."
While Hughes is still hospitalized, he's in a stable condition, along with two of the other victims. The other 2 men have since been discharged.
Police have issued 5 wanted posters in relation to this shooting.
