SAN ANTONIO – A shooting at a South Side motel early Thursday morning that left one man dead and two wounded came as a frightening wake-up call for other guests.
Shay Jones says she feared someone might be shooting at her room at the Everkleen Motel when she woke up to the gunshots around 2:30 a.m.
“I just heard, ‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’ and I just went in the restroom and I was, like, ‘Forget that,’” she said.
Kathy Luna also thought the gunfire in the 1300 block of Roosevelt was a bit too close for comfort.
Luna said she heard about eight gunshots that seemed to be fired at close range.
“And then it stopped for a while and everybody starts looking out,” Luna said. “Then a few minutes later, (the shooters) came back.”
It would be a while before anyone would know for sure what happened.
San Antonio police officers, meanwhile, were busy attending to a shooting victim at a gas station down the street.
They found a man in the parking lot suffering from a gunshot wound to his hip.
After police heard his story, they realized his ordeal had begun at the motel.
The man told officers he was approaching a motel room when someone began shooting at him, police said.
The man said he ran from the motel but the shooter caught up with him at the gas station.
Police went to the motel room, where they found a second crime scene, shell casings and other evidence inside the room.
The other two victims showed up at a downtown hospital, police said.
One of them died after being shot in the chest. The other suffered a gunshot wound.
“God bless the ones that got hurt. I hope they’re OK but I don’t know,” Jones said. “It just affects the hotel. Then we have kids that stay here and it allows them not to be able to come outside.”
Along with what police found inside the room, they took a man into custody for questioning.
Police said he appeared to have some connection to the shooting.