‘War zone’: Innocent woman hit when bullets fly in Shelby drive-by shooting

SHELBY, N.C. — A woman needs to learn how to walk again after she was caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting.

Her mother told Reporter Ken Lemon she can’t sleep now because they have no idea who shot her daughter. Detectives at the Shelby Police Department are still trying to identify the shooter.

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It’s hard to imagine any circumstance more innocent. Sarah Hopper invited her 42-year-old daughter over for dinner on Thursday. Her daughter was eating outside when the shooting suddenly started.

“I go to the door and I peep out,” Hopper said.

Hopper won’t even step off the porch since the gunfire put bullet holes in her house and sent her daughter to the hospital.

“I don’t deserve this,” Hopper said. “She don’t deserve this.”

Hopper said that day, she invited her daughter and a couple of friends to dinner. Her daughter and her daughter’s best friend decided to eat at a table on the front lawn along Ruth Street. Hopper and her best friend sat in the living room.

“It sounded like I was in a freaking war zone,” Hopper said. “Bullets coming all through my house, over my head.”

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She heard screams from the front lawn and ran outside during the shooting.

“I got to the door and she was laying on the steps and I just lost it. I just started screaming,” Hopper said.

The shot went through her daughter’s leg. She has been in the hospital since Thursday and will have to learn to walk again.

Hopper counted four shots into her home. One went through a window just above her head.

“I could have been killed, my daughter could have been killed, her friend, my friend,” she said.

They never saw the people reportedly shooting at each other nearby, but Hopper wants them caught.

“To whoever was doing that shooting, I forgive you, but not going to forget it,” she said.

She told Lemon any one of the people who regularly walk by her front door could be one of the shooters and she wouldn’t know it. That makes her uneasy and it’s why she hopes someone is caught soon.

(WATCH BELOW: Search underway for gunman after teen’s death in Shelby)