WILKINSON COUNTY, Ga. — The Wilkinson County Sheriff’s Department is searching for the person who fired shots into a Gordon home and hit two 15-year-olds. It happened early Tuesday just after midnight.
Darlene Lavender said her neighborhood is usually quiet. But Tuesday morning, she heard several loud noises she couldn't ignore.
"I was watching TV, and I heard gunfire, rapid gunfire,” she said. “Not the kind where you pull the trigger, one bullet at a time. I mean, this would be like automatic, just pow pow pow."
She and a few other neighbors believed it was a drive-by shooting, but the Wilkinson County Sheriff Richard Chatman said the evidence showed a different story.
Chatman said their investigators believe the shooter stood in the front yard and fired toward the home. He said when they got to the scene, they found more than a dozen shell casings.
Both 15-year-olds were sleeping in their bedroom. Chatman said each boy was hit once.
"We believe that there was some retribution of some kind for some reason,” he said. “We hadn't been able to get to the top bottom of that yet. The young men that we spoke to said that they had nothing ongoing anyone."
They suffered non-life-threatening injuries, and the hospital released the teens the same morning. Chatman said crimes like this impact the community deeply.
"When you start emptying that many rounds into a residence, you don't know who you're going to hit,” he said. “You don't know what innocent person that you're going to hit. By the grace of God, no one got killed in this incident."
Chatman said they are using word-of-mouth and social media to figure out what happened.
"I hope they find who did it and I hope they prosecute them because that's the right thing to do,” Lavender said. “Stop it in its tracks."
Chatman said the Georgia Bureau of Investigations is helping with the case. He said along with the shell casings from the gun, they retrieved a significant amount of evidence. If you have any information, you can call the Wilkinson County Sheriff's office at 478-946-2411.