By Steve Huffman
Salisbury Post
SPENCER ó A summer afternoon’s calm was broken by the echo of gunfire here Monday.
Residents in the vicinity of Fourth Street and Spencer Avenue said they heard several shots fired shortly after 3 p.m.
“They weren’t little shots,” said one woman who was sitting on the front porch of her house with family members.
“They were ‘Boom!’ ‘Boom!’ ‘Boom!’ shots.”
She and the others declined to give their names, saying they feared retribution from the shooter. Immediately after the shots were fired, two cars raced out of an alley that stretches behind houses in the 600 block of Fourth Street.
A silver car backed out of the alley onto Spencer Avenue. It was followed by a burgundy vehicle. The cars headed south toward Seventh Avenue.
They were apparently last seen racing out Seventh Avenue Extension.
Sgt. Wayne Comer of the Spencer Police Department said late Monday afternoon that a suspect is being sought. He declined to give the man’s name until he’s apprehended.
Comer said the shooting happened in the alley behind a house at 611 Fourth St. He said he knows of no injuries though someone shot into one unoccupied vehicle numerous times.
“We’ve heard anywhere from two, to six, to eight, to a war,” Comer said, when asked the number of shots fired.
He said officers have evidence of only four shots, those fired into the trunk and rear bumper of a 1992 Ford Crown Victoria belonging to Torrey Odell Stockton, 32, of 1408 Camp Green St., Charlotte.
A small-caliber handgun was used.
Comer said Stockton was inside the house at 611 Fourth St. at the time of the shooting and doesn’t want to file charges.
Comer said the woman who lives in the house was “not too cooperative” with police. He said there were a number of people in the residence at the time of the shooting.
Comer said the suspect will face charges of discharging a firearm in town limits.
“He wasn’t firing into a house. He wasn’t firing into an occupied vehicle,” Comer said. “Why he shot into an unoccupied car a number of times, we don’t know.”
Witnesses said the burgundy vehicle appeared to be chasing the silver one as they left the scene. But Comer said that according to Stockton, the two drivers know one another and were traveling together, not chasing each other.
One woman who lives near the scene of the shooting said the gunfire was so loud that, at first, she couldn’t figure out what it was.
“I said, ‘Who’s beating on the side of my house?’ ” the woman said.
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Contact Steve Huffman at 704-797-4222 or shuffman@salisburypost.com.