‘Like a warzone’: Neighbors react to Charlotte shooting that left four officers dead
By Kelly Kendall
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CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (WXII) — Residents of the east Charlotte neighborhood where four law enforcement officers were killed on Monday are reacting to the shooting.
WXII 12 News spoke with residents of the Shannon Park neighborhood where 3 U.S. Marshals officers and one Charlotte Mecklenburg Police officer were shot and killed in a shootout on the 5000 block of Galway Drive.
Tuesday, some Shannon Park residents made their way to the house on Galway Drive to see the destruction. One of those residents was a woman who said she and her husband were coming back from a trip when she began receiving calls and texts about what was happening.
“We have an ADT camera on our house and so I saw at least 20-30 cop cars parked in our driveway and our front yard, down the street,” she said. “We live 0.3 miles away so I knew something was going on pretty serious.”
She says she and her husband were concerned about returning to their home that evening and considered getting a hotel. She described the scene where the shooting took place as unsettling.
“Definitely didn’t imagine this much chaos,” she said. “So it’s definitely very shocking.”
Saing Chhoeun lives next door to the house where the shooting took place. He says he was preparing to leave for work when he saw the U.S. Marshals approaching his neighbor’s house. He watched as his neighbor began opening fire, and the officers returned fire.
“It’s a lot,” he said. “I’ve never been through this experience in my life.”
He says at one point, officers entered his house with the intention of firing from his home at his neighbor’s home. He also saw officers going through his backyard to get to his neighbor’s house.
Chhoeun says he is saddened by the death of the officers.
“You see the bullets and the officer down right there in front of you; it’s like a warzone, he said.”
He says he did not know the people who lived in the house where the shooting took place very well. He says he saw people coming and going and would occasionally chat with them.
Chhoeun says he’s lived in his current home for six years. He first moved to Shannon Park in the 1990s. He says he never would have expected something like this to happen.
“I didn’t see that coming at all,” he said.
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