GREENSBORO, N.C. — Greensboro police are investigating after two people were killed, including a 19-year-old Statesville woman, and four others were hurt in a shooting Tuesday night, officials said.
Officers responded just before midnight to Circle Drive near East Bessemer Avenue. At the scene, officers found two people who had been shot. Four other shooting victims later showed up at a nearby hospital.
Police confirmed two of the people who were shot died. Family members told Channel 9 that one of the victims who died, Kaneycha Turner, of Statesville, was a freshman student at North Carolina A&T University. WXLV reported that the other victim was 15-year-old Ronaldlee Snipes.
Turner’s mother, Latoya Rucker, said her daughter was at a block party close to the campus when shots rang out.
“I didn’t get to see her,” Rucker told Channel 9′s Glenn Counts. “I didn’t get to say goodbye and she had to die without me. And I was supposed to be able to protect her, and I couldn’t. Now my baby is gone.”
Rucker said that she raised Turner in the church.
Turner was a star on the girls’ basketball team at A&T and was on a scholarship to study business.
“She just wanted to go to school, live her life and have fun,” Rucker said. “And that’s all she was trying to do when she was senselessly taken from us.”
Greensboro police have not said what sparked the violence.
“I just wish they would put the guns down,” Rucker said. “What’s the point of shooting? Why shoot recklessly not knowing? Bullets don’t have eyes. They don’t know where they are going to go.”
The family said the police haven’t told them much, which bothers them. They want to see an arrest.
“I want him to suffer the same way I have to suffer,” Rucker said. “My family has to suffer. My friends have to suffer they way my baby had to lay there and suffer by herself.”
“She was a really great granddaughter,” said Phyllis Simpson, Turner’s grandmother. “I loved her to death. She was working two jobs. Very athletic. Everybody loved her and I’m going to miss her so very much.”
It was not clear if any arrests have been made.
Turner’s funeral was held today at Statesville High School at 1:00 p.m.
Her former basketball coach, Reggie Imes, had this to say about her.
“During tryouts, there was this girl, every time I looked over. If there was a basketball, she was there,” Imes said, “She was auditioning quietly, but doing it in an effective way as well”.
Anyone with information on this case is asked to contact Greensboro/Guilford Crime Stoppers at 336-373-1000.
(WATCH BELOW: After shooting, Livingstone College hires security experts to evaluate safety)
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