Man shot in head at home
“He was in his house when he was shot and there was a broken window,” Chinn said at 8:45 p.m. at the crime scene.
Kathy Chapel, Fairfax Inova administrative director, said the man who was shot in the head and flown to the hospital, was in critical condition at 10 p.m. Wednesday.
Police were investigating and had no further information, but residents of the town house community said the house where the shooting occurred was the scene of recent and continuing trouble.
“There’s a house full of people over there,” said a neighbor who was wearing a baseball cap and a sweatshirt beneath a workman’s jacket.
The man said recent violence between residents of the town house and others had been building over several days.
“What they’re going to find is that this has been an escalating thing. There have been fistfights and everything else going on over there,” the man said as he watched the lights flash on the police cruisers that arrived shortly after the shooting.
“There was a fight over there earlier today. Pretty good sized … six to nine people,” the man said as his young daughter stood beneath his arm and pulled her hands inside the long sleeves of her oversized sweatshirt.
“This had no other way to go. I’ve been up ’til 4:30 every morning, for the last three nights watching this thing escalate,” he said.
Another neighbor, who lives a street away, said he heard shots, but couldn’t be sure how many since they came in rapid succession.
“I heard three [shots] and I live on the other street, but it could have been more,” he said.
The man said he heard the shots while he was watching television and police arrived soon after that.
“They got over here fast,” the man said of police response.
“I was watching ‘Emeril Live,’ the food show, so it must have been after eight o’clock,” the man said of the time he heard the shots.
Staff writer Keith Walker can be reached at (703) 878-8063.