SOMERVILLE, Mass. — He does not want to be identified, but a tenant at Clarendon Hill Towers said he witnessed a massive shootout around midnight Tuesday -- and he can’t believe no one was hurt or killed.
“I was looking out my window and I thought it was a pack of firecrackers going off,” he said. “But who would do fireworks in February?”
The witness tells Boston 25 News that while he was too far away to identify anyone, he saw one person on foot, fleeing, and a car. The car stopped, he said, and the shooting began.
The witness called 9-1-1.
Police arrived in minutes. And the witness said he helped officers count the number of bullet casings. And the final number was shocking.
“We ended up counting out 38 shell casings,” he said. That’s crazy.”
Perhaps crazier, the fact those dozens of bullets fired apparently hit no one.
“We don’t have anything on anybody being sent to the hospital,” the witness said, “But time will tell.”
Clarendon Hill Towers is located in Somerville, where Broadway drains into Alewife Brook Parkway. It’s close to Tufts University and residents tell Boston 25 News it has not been, in their experience, a place for gunshots of any kind.
“A lot of people were shocked,” said Abdul Ahmed, another Clarendon Hill Towers resident. “There are kids here, there’s a school here, there’s a veteran’s shelter here. It doesn’t happen here. It’s a very quiet neighborhood.”
But the Somerville shooting was preceded ten hours earlier by a similar incident in Cambridge -- again, in an area not known for violent crime.
Cambridge Police said they found evidence of multiple gunshots at the corner of School Street and Bishop Allen Drive -- those shots were fired around 2:15 on Monday afternoon. Again, no one was injured.
It’s unknown whether the incidents are connected.
Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne said, in a statement, that the incident is deeply concerning and that she’s relieved no one was hurt. She said the Somerville Police Department continues to investigate the shooting.
“Whether or not that investigation ultimately links this to gang activity, we take all incidents of gun violence extremely seriously,” the mayor said.
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