JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – An Arlington woman said she heard dozens of gunshots and found blood in her backyard following a shootout between two vehicles early Wednesday morning.
Julia Bacher spoke with News4JAX to describe the aftermath of the shootout that left a teen injured overnight. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said the teen was caught in the crossfire as he was walking down Rogero Road, about a block north of Fort Caroline Road.
“I was scared. They sounded very close. Not only did they sound really close, but like it just sounded like it was like right outside our window,” Bacher said.
Investigators said the teen suffered a single gunshot wound to his back and is expected to be OK. He was taken to a hospital in stable condition.
Bacher recalled hearing the gunshots, but wasn’t sure what was going on.
“I thought maybe it was like a bad transformer. We’ve had some transformers in the area go haywire. They kind of sound similar. So I was hoping it wasn’t gunshots, but we got a knock on our door from police, maybe 10 minutes later, that they were telling us it had basically happened in our front yard,” Bacher said.
Bacher said that witnessing the scene, which was full of police cars, ambulances, and a fire truck, was shocking, as she had never experienced anything like it before in this neighborhood.
“Unsettled that that could happen here,” Bacher said.
But what shocked her even more, came later this morning.
She said as she was getting ready for work, she noticed her back gate had been left open.
“I went to go close the gate, I saw a lot a lot of blood all over our beach chair... blood on our fence, our chain link fence, blood on our walls. It was a lot of blood,” Bacher said.
It is still unclear what exactly took place and who entered Bacher’s backyard, but she said she believes it was one of the people involved in the shootout.
“It is just really sad that it, that it got to that point between the two cars full of people and the teen getting kind of caught in between that,” Bacher said.
JSO said the cars, both Hyundais, were later recovered, but the occupants of one of the cars ran off.
Three people from one of the cars were detained, and three guns were recovered “in and around” that vehicle, JSO said.
Anyone with information about the shootout is asked to call the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office at 904-630-0500.