Caught In The Crossfire

There are five holes in Donald and Jane Edwards’ Mulmar Street home.
There are the obvious ones — the four holes that trace a straight line where a stray bullet pierced their front window in late January, tearing through their front window, the window shears, the curtains, and finally through the sheetrock right above their living room couch.
Behind the sheetrock, the bullet disintegrated against the backside of the brick wall, falling down between the wall studs.
Had anyone been on the front step, knocking on their front door, or standing up from the couch, they’d likely be dead or gravely injured.
The fifth, and less obvious hole is the one piercing their sense of home, of security, in the very place they’ve spent the last 50 years together and raised a family.
Donald, 75, said he was in the kitchen that late January night when he heard the “pop” of the bullet, and knew immediately what it was. Donald went down the hall to check and make sure Jane was safe and sound. She was, thankfully.
Peering around the corner into the living room, he saw the hole in the front window. It wasn’t the first time bullets had flown in the neighborhood. A few years back, across the street at the Georgetown Apartments, a man was shot to death.
Other neighbors had complained about the occasional stray bullet, but decided against reporting them.
Donald was bolder. The ongoing situation across the street had deteriorated to a point where he didn’t feel safe in his own home, he said. Donald wanted someone to answer for the bullet.
“I am determined to have this thing, and [the county’s and the city’s response] under a microscope,” he said, sliding back and forth last week in his living room rocking-chair.
But who to look to for answers, as the bullet was apparently fired from the apartment complex, which is in the city’s jurisdiction, and his house, the ersatz target, resides in the county?
The dividing line between city and county turf is nothing new in West Ashley. In Avondale, retail growth in a commercial strip located in the city along Savannah Highway resulted in cars parked in the yards of homes residing in the county.
Initially, calls for service to the county sheriff’s office were redirected to the city police, and vice versa. The problem there has since been rectified.
A call for comment this week to the Charleston Police Department initially resulted in its public information officer repeatedly saying “It’s a county case; it’s a county case’ it’s a county case.”
A second call had police spokesperson Charles Francis saying there was no “turf issue, because if an incident occurs in the city, the city police cover it; we will make a call to the sheriff’s office if something like this happens, and sometimes we work together.”
“But, how does a bullet fired in the city become a county problem? When it’s in-flight?” asked Donald, a retired Bell South employee who still helps MUSC with designing and installing its fiber optic network.
Sheriff’s Department public information officer Major Eric Watson was more inclusive this week.
“Everything that happens within the county is our interest — we want everyone to be safe, that’s why we’re here,” said Watson.
Watson said he understood the Edwards’ frustration. “We’re looking into it; we’ve increased patrols in the area,” he said before adding that several leads have developed.
Because it was an ongoing investigation he declined to say how those leads were developed, other than to say they weren’t the result of the apartment complex’s 24-hour video surveillance system.
City Councilman Aubry Alexander lives around the corner from the Edwards house in nearby Huntington Woods. He knows the street, he’s been by the street, and he remembers in better days when the apartment complex was where his coaches and teachers at Middleton High used to live there.
Alexander said there was an easy solution to the Edwards’ quandary, and for other similarly disaffected families: annexation.
“We have more police officers on the road; we have more black-and-whites on patrol … and we generally have faster response times,” said Alexander.
Donald and Jane have vowed to stay put, but they say they want their home and their neighborhood to be safe once again. And they will keep going until they find whoever can get it that way again for them.