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Several people who live just west of Western Ave., in the 400 blk of Walnut and Huron Streets said they heard gunshots ring out around 11 or 12 Wednesday night. But they didn’t know a man was dead in an alley between the two streets until hours later – when someone found 42-year-old Andre Byrd.
“First there was two or three, then I heard like a machine gun [sound] so it frightened me, it scared me,” said Severo Jimenez, who lives nearby.
That gunfire sent Jimenez to the floor, fearing for his life.
“I turned off the TV, hit the ground, turned the lights off and crawled to my bed and just laid there looking out the window, making sure nobody’s trying to get into my house,” he said.
It’s not clear whether one of those gunshots he heard was the one that hit Byrd in the head, killing him. But orange spray paint behind a garage marked the spot where a passerby found his body just before 5:15 Thursday morning.
Theresa Sells didn’t hear gunshots, but she and her husband woke up to flashing lights.
“I look out the window, they got the whole street blocked [and I’m] trying to figure out where it’s coming from,” she said. “We thought maybe they might have had a car pulled over like they always do.”
But when she found out it was a body so close to her home, she felt uneasy.
“That freaks me out. Because my family here at the house always wants me to keep my doors unlocked,” Sells said.
Detectives spent the morning collecting evidence and looking for clues into what happened behind that garage and why.
“It’s just crazy,” Jimenez said. “I thought this neighborhood got better but it’s getting slowly worse. Because I grew up in this neighborhood right on the next street and it was never like this. Never.”