SAN ANTONIO – A 21-year-old man is being treated at a hospital after suffering a gunshot wound in his leg during what San Antonio police described as a shootout at a Northeast Side apartment complex.
Officers found the man just before 4 a.m. inside his home at the Merida Apartments, located near Loop 410 and Starcrest.
A preliminary report from SAPD says officers believe he ran back to his apartment after being involved in a disturbance in the parking lot.
At the scene, officers described it as a shootout between two groups of people.
The man was taken to a hospital by ambulance. He told officers the shooter left in a dark colored car.
Officers who responded to the call roped off the entire front section of the apartment complex.
According to them and neighbors, bullets were flying all over the area during the shooting.
“It sounded like 15 (shots), plus two extra ones,” said Ashley Perez, who lives at the complex. “Woke me up out of my sleep. I almost fell off the bed.”
Perez said it sounded like that barrage of gunfire was right outside her window.
She quickly ran to another room to check on her mother. “I was, like, nervous and scared. I couldn’t even go back to sleep,” she said. “A bullet has no name. It aims anywhere and it shoots and it ricochets. It could ricochet off somebody and hit a window.”
It appears that is just what happened.
Stray bullets left pock marks all over the railing of a ground floor patio, smashed through the sliding glass door of another apartment, and slammed into the wall of another building.
Police say, fortunately, no one else was hurt. “For people living out here, it’s not safe for kids,” Perez said. “I think something needs to stop.”
Several neighbors told KSAT 12 News this was not the first shooting at the apartment complex. Perez said if this kind of trouble continues, she fears there could be an even more tragic ending.
As of late Monday morning, police had not made any arrests.