JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A man wounded in a drive-by shooting Monday afternoon was at least the 11th person shot in less than 72 hours in Jacksonville.
The latest shooting happened about 12:50 p.m. Monday on East 11th Street near Phoenix Avenue, within a mile range of Kirby-Smith and Matthew Gilbert middle schools.
According to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, a man was shot in his yard during a drive-by and then taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Police said the gunfire came from a passing blue Toyota Corolla with no tint and factory rims with two men inside.
A man who lives a few streets over said his house and car were hit by gunfire during a drive-by on Sunday night.
"The windshield in my car is damaged, so it's gonna have to be replaced," Carlos Ramirez said. "There's a bullet hole in my house and the house next door has plenty in the windows."
By News4Jax records, Monday afternoon's shooting brings the number of people shot since Friday night to at least 11. There were six shootings reported:
A 35-year-old man showed up about 6 p.m. at Memorial Hospital with a gunshot wound to his abdomen and police found his car parked outside a convenience store on University Boulevard North in the Charter Point neighborhood of Arlington, according to a Sheriff's Office report.
A few hours later, ShotSpotter notified police of gunfire on McConihe Street in Northwest Jacksonville about 9:30 p.m. Friday and, around the same time, a man took himself to a hospital with a gunshot wound.
On Saturday, a man who had been shot multiple times showed up about 2:30 p.m. at UF Health hospital. The man told officers he left his Dodge Challenger at the Winn-Dixie on Sago Avenue in Oceanway. Officers found his car in the grocery store parking lot with visible bullet holes.
On Saturday night, three men shot on West 22nd Street in Northwest Jacksonville were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
About 12:15 a.m. Monday, three men were shot, one fatally, near a Checkers restaurant on Kings Road in the New Town area.
Less than two hours later, a security guard was shot and killed during an arcade room robbery just after 2 a.m. Monday on Edgewood Avenue North in the Paxon neighborhood.
According to News4Jax records, there were 16 homicides last month and there have been 102 homicides this year in Jacksonville. If the city continues to see a killing just about every other day for the rest of this year, Jacksonville could exceed its homicide totals of 140 in 2006 and 152 in 2007.
After the last shooting Monday afternoon, News4Jax went to the Moncrief area of Northwest Jacksonville where gun violence is known to erupt. Some people said they've lived there their entire lives and have never known a summer to be as violent as this one.
"This is the worst I have ever seen in my life," said Enoch Jackson, a Jacksonville resident of 61 years.
Some said violence is, unfortunately, the way of life on the streets.
"Violence is how many people control and live their lives," said resident Carol Hartley. "It’s sad our youth are being killed this way."
A director for the Cure Violence program, which treats crime as a public health crisis, told News4Jax by phone on Monday that finding viable solutions to the city's violence is a marathon, not a sprint, and the organization is working on ways to mediate conflicts and prevent retaliatory violence.
"I've never experienced this much violence back-to-back at all," said News4Jax crime and safety expert Ken Jefferson.
But Jefferson agreed that Cure Violence needs more time to come up with tangible solutions.
"Every time we ask for a comment from them after something bad happens, they have the same comment and I must agree with them," he said. "We have to give them time. It just got here a couple of months ago.”
Jefferson added that he's heard from people in the community that it is starting to have an impact, but it will just take a while to really notice that change.
Many residents said they believe a lot of the violence can be curbed if parents discipline their children to keep them on the straight and narrow.