JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Three young men were shot multiple times Wednesday night on Fredricksburg Avenue in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood, and one of the victims is not expected to survive, a Jacksonville homicide detective said.
According to the police report, a 20-year-old man and a 19-year-old man suffered serious gunshot wounds and another 19-year-old suffered minor gunshot wounds.
Sheriff's Office Sgt. Jay Farhat said the men were inside a vehicle parked outside a home when numerous shots were fired about 8:45 p.m.
All three were taken to UF Health Jacksonville, where one man had critical injuries.
Farhat said the triple shooting was not random and it appeared the victims were targeted.
Evidence led detectives to believe the shots came from outside the car and there could possibly be multiple shooters, Farhat said.
Investigators said there was no indication the incident was related to any other shootings.
Gunfire hits homes
The bullets also hit three homes and several vehicles along the street, including one home with six children, ranging in age from 2 to 17 years old, according to the police report.
News4Jax found a trash can riddled with bullet holes in front of a home where an elderly woman lives.
Erline Scarlett said she saw several cars whipping around down Fredericksburg Avenue before the gunfire rang out.
"They go down that way and they come back this way," Scarlett said.
She didn't realize her home had been hit by the gunfire until News4Jax pointed out a bullet hole less than 2 feet from her kitchen window that had been marked by police.
“Well Jesus, they must have just put that up there, because that was not there,” she said.
Despite the violence happening on her street, Scarlett said she would never consider leaving the home she's lived in for more than 40 years.
Several other people said they heard the gunfire but didn't see anything. Alonzo, who lives down the street and declined to give his last name, said he heard at least 50 shots but only saw the aftermath of the shooting.
“I know I saw one of the guys in the back of the ambulance. He was hurt pretty bad,” Alonzo said. “You could see the bullets hanging out his back, the pellets, whatever it was, hanging out his back.”
Looking at neighborhood crime
A closer look at this neighborhood revealed that in the past six months, within a half-mile of Fredricksburg Avenue, there have been:
- 34 assaults
- 21 burglaries
- 13 vehicle thefts/break-ins
- 3 robberies
“We don’t even really have kids on this street. It’s more elderly people, so it’s really sad to know that someone brought this foolishness on this street right here, where somebody's mother, somebody's daughter, somebody's son have to come out the house to go to school, to go to work and can get hurt at any time," Alonzo said. "It’s just sad.”
Anyone with information is asked to call the Sheriff's Office at 904-630-0500. To remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS.
I-TEAM: Digging into shooting numbers
Wednesday's triple shooting took place in the 32208 ZIP code, which had the second highest total of shootings in Duval County over the last two years, according to data provided by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.
The News4Jax I-TEAM spent months compiling the data, which included all of 2015 and the first nine months of 2016.
According to the data, there were 86 total shootings in 32208 from the beginning of 2015 to September 2016. That includes 69 adults and 17 juveniles.
In 2016, 32208 had the highest number of juveniles shot countywide with nine shot from January to September.
The I-TEAM has continued to work to complete the picture and get data for the final quarter of 2016, but the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office told us in the new year that the data would largely not be made available to the media, even though we are willing to pay for their time to compute it.
JSO said it's not an existing public record, which makes it harder to give us the information.
The I-TEAM created a color-coded interactive ZIP code map that shows the most dangerous zones around the city.
The darkest red is 32209. The five next most dangerous ZIP codes, including 32206, are colored peach. They are concentrated in the metro area in the Northside and Westside.
Conversely, the safest areas are Mandarin, San Jose, and the Beaches.
To see how many people were shot in your ZIP code, check out the map below:
