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'This traumatized all of them': Johnson County neighbors concerned after shooting near football game

Friday night, a shooting in Johnson County happened on a street outside the stadium where a high school scrimmage was taking place.

JOHNSON COUNTY, Ga. — People in Johnson County are showing concern after a shooting that happened on a street outside the stadium where a high school football scrimmage was taking place.

Luckily, no one was injured, but making residents put a sharp focus on community safety. 

"A bullet has no name, no direction of travel. Anybody could have got hurt, anybody could have got killed," Sheneice Hodges said. 

For more than 50 years, Hodges has called Wrightsville home.

"When you enter Johnson County, the sign says, 'The friendliest town in Georgia,'" Hodges said.

But Friday night, a Dublin man, Joshua Jerome Russell, was arrested and charged with firing shots into the air during a scrimmage football game on Herschel Walker Drive in Wrightsville, just outside Lovett Stadium.

"I got nieces and nephews, they're running, screaming, hollering. It scared them so bad. They was terrified. To hear my oldest grand say he don't ever want to go to a football game, that's hurting. This traumatized all of them, it really did," Hodges said. 

There was a large crowd at the event and approximately 100 high school football players, coaches, band members, cheerleaders, and other staff on the field at the time. No one was hurt. School officials secured the field and escorted players and coaches off.

"No parent should have to go to the game watching the football game and hear gunshots and they got kids running around. That's unsafe," Hodges said. 

Hodges wants to instill safety and security in her grandkids.

"Not to be afraid. It's uncalled for and Johnson County is not going to have it," Hodges said. 

The school district and sheriff's office declined comment on the shooting.

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