CHARLOTTE — The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said they’ve connected a teenager to a string of shootings in Charlotte, thanks to their gun suppression team.
Two of the shootings occurred on May 22, one in East Charlotte and the other in Southwest Charlotte.
CMPD connected these shootings to a third on May 27, stating the same suspect used the same weapon.
One victim woke up at just after midnight on May 22 to the sound of commotion outside her home. She began recording and caught the moment a bullet flew threw her window.
She woke up her daughter and found the shell casing shortly after.
“I was sleeping and my mom just came into my room and said something was happening, wake up, come to the room,” said Bianka Martinez, age 15, “And I was like, what is happening?”
Translating for her mother, Bianka explained they left Ecuador 10 months ago to live in a safer area.
“We were thinking maybe that would happen in my country, but here it’s weird,” Bianka said.
The police report for that shooting says bullets hit their neighbor’s homes in the Steele Creek apartment complex.
About an hour after this shooting, a home in Hickory Grove was hit.
Five days later in a different neighborhood, a woman says she woke up to loud bangs.
“I wanted to believe it was fireworks, but I knew what it was,” she says.
The woman was too scared to reveal her name or face on camera, but she says she didn’t even know the bullet went through her living room wall until the next morning.
“I had a bullet hole through my picture and was upset,” she said.
CMPD says shell casings from each scene, like the one Bianka’s mom found, matched. The casing paired with other evidence allowed the crime gun suppression team to arrest at been suspect during a traffic stop. The gun found in the car matched the ballistics from all three shootings.
No one was injured in the shootings, 21 victims were listed in the police reports.
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