JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A handful of people say their property was struck by bullets on New Year’s, apparently due to celebratory gunfire.
News4JAX heard from two car owners in the Five Points neighborhood, who said they found bullet holes. No injuries were reported.
Tony Wooley said his SUV was struck, and it now has a hole in the side.
“I’m like, ‘Mom, we’ve been shot.’ And she starts checking herself and said, ‘No, the car was shot,’” Wooley told News4JAX. ‘I’m like, ‘Holy crap. What if one of us were standing there?’”
The position of the hole suggests the bullet came down vertically from the sky. Notably, the hole was just inches from the gas tank door. Wooley said there was no exit hole, so he assumed the bullet was still inside the wall of the SUV.
“I don’t think it hit anything vital. But other than that, it’s a very scary situation,” he said.
Another vehicle owner in Five Points said a bullet came down through the windshield and landed on the front seat where, fortunately, no one was sitting.
Z. Farhat is the manager of Green Acres Sporting Goods in Jacksonville. He said that based on the size of the hole in Wooley’s SUV, the bullet that struck the vehicle was likely fired from a 9mm handgun.
As for the bullet that went through a windshield, he believes that was fired from a rifle.
“The longer bullet looks more like a 30-caliber bullet. My best guess would probably be a 7.62 X 39. That’s a very popular caliber that people shoot because the ammo is fairly inexpensive,” he said.
Farhat said people who fire guns in the air to ring in the new year have no idea where those bullets end up.
“Shoot something in the air like that, and it’s going to come down somewhere and it’s usually not going to come down in the area it was originally shot from,” he said.
On Nextdoor.com, people were responding to a post on celebratory gunfire with their stories about their own experiences on New Year’s Eve night.
One woman wrote:
“My co-worker’s mother was awakened last night by a bullet that came through her bedroom ceiling and was found embedded in her dresser. It was around midnight on the Westside.”
And a man named Jim wrote:
“I think one hit my house. I heard it, but haven’t found the hole yet.”
As for Wooley, he’s trying to figure out how to pay to repair the damage to his SUV.
“It’s really stressful because we live on a check-to-check basis, and it’s next to impossible to afford a repair like this one,” he said.