SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio Police struggled to hold the line on violence in east San Antonio Wednesday evening.
It started around 6 p.m. when a family said a man with an AR-15 was threatening to shoot them.
Police raced to the 300 block of Charcliff in Eastwood Village, where they found the armed man. They observed him walking around the neighborhood, eventually finding a rifle in an alley near where the threat had been reported.
Police said they were able to take that man into custody without incident. But while they were working to contain one threat, they heard another.
Radio traffic among officers indicated they were listening to a large, long blast of gunfire nearby.
Within minutes, neighbors who live in Huntleigh Park, less than one mile away and a short block from Davis Middle School, started calling in reports of a gun battle in the street at the corner of Belinda Lee and Carol Crest.
One woman, who didn’t want to be identified, said she saw the two groups of combatants get out of their vehicles and fire wildly before running off.
The neighbor said she saw one man run through her alley, jump into a waiting vehicle and take off.
When police arrived they found so many shell casings in the street the evidence technicians ran out of markers.
The technicians ended up using paper tags to count out at least 69 shell casings in the street and in the yard of a corner house.
“Thank God nobody got hit," a sergeant on the scene said. " A lot of rounds were fired.”
Descriptions of the men involved were vague, but the sergeant said witnesses reported the firefight was between occupants of a maroon van and a silver vehicle.
During the dinner hour, when lots of neighbors were in their homes, the blast of gunfire caused many to hit the floor.
One woman who called herself Lola said when she heard a shot hit close by, she thought her house had been hit.
“We ducked down but it does no good because this happened also last night and we called the cops and nothing happened,” Lola said.
Lola added that when the shooting stopped and she came out to inspect her house, she found a fresh bullet hole in the side of her vehicle.
The slug had pierced the metal skirt and landed in the driveway.
Shaking her head in frustration, Lola said “This is an every day situation. This is an everyday on going thing.”
Lola said police could do more to keep neighbors informed.
“We’ve reached out to them but of course we don’t get any information.”
In her driveway, next to the vehicle that was hit Wednesday evening, Lola pointed out another vehicle with a bullet hole in the hood.
Lola said repeated shots so close to her home and her family is not acceptable.
Another woman closer to the firefight said one of her cars was hit by a stray bullet. She said at first they noticed a bullet had shattered the front windshield of the car, but when they went to drive the vehicle, they discovered another bullet had somehow pierced the engine compartment and caused a catastrophic oil leak. They spent Thursday trying to get a rental car and trying to figure out if any portion of the damage will be covered by insurance.
Virginia lives mid-block. She said her property wasn’t hit this time but she said two shootings in two days is too much.
On Tuesday night, she said, there was a similar attack in which it sounded like warring groups were firing at each other.
“What I heard was a succession of seven shots and then stop, like they were exchanging magazines or something three different times,” Virginia said.
With regard to the Wednesday shooting, Virginia said she was behind brick walls so she didn’t hit the floor but she was surprised by the barrage.
"I heard tahtahtahtahtahtah," Virginia said. “There’s a lot of gang activity and drug activity going down my street.”
Virginia said one nearby neighbor who has owned her home for 45 years is fed up with the shooting.
“She's getting ready to pack up and leave. She says I'm tired of hitting the floor all the time. That's how bad it has gotten,” Virginia said.
Virginia said she attended a recent community safety forum hosted by the District 2 council office and she was surprised that at a meeting looking for solutions to crime problems, not a single police officer was in attendance.
“None of the cops were there,” Virginia said. “We just want somebody to listen to us and hear us out and stop dismissing our claims because the evidence speaks for itself.”
As of Thursday, police said the investigation is ongoing but no arrests have been made.