Sometime in the afternoon of Dec. 4, William Jordan was walking outside his home on Main Street in Crawford and saw a hole in the back of his wife’s Hyundai hatchback, just left of the brand logo.
A noise at about 1 that morning had awakened the Jordans. They thought something had fallen in the house, so they went back to sleep.
When Jordan looked into the hole in the car, however, he saw the bullet that created it.
“I’m assuming it was a stray bullet that came this way,” said Jordan, 83, who spent nearly three decades as Crawford’s police chief before retiring about 12 years ago. “My first reaction after seeing it was, ‘Can we move somewhere else?’”
Two doors down from the Jordans, Walter Lowery heard the shooting start and knew exactly what it was. After daylight, he recalled, he walked directly across Main where it intersects with Lodge Street, a mere 100 yards or so from his front door. There he sifted through a smattering of bullet casings lying on the ground that Lowndes County sheriff’s deputies later identified as having been fired from a 9-millimeter handgun.
“They might have just been shooting in the air, I’m not sure,” said Lowery, 66, a lifelong Crawford resident. “… Most likely, it’s some youngsters.”
Dec. 4 wasn’t the first “shots-fired” incident in the Lodge Street area this year, and it certainly wasn’t the last. This month alone, sheriff’s deputies have responded to a handful of such reports. For Lowery, though, it may be the most memorable.
“Most of the time, when someone is shooting at night, it will wake me up,” Lowery told The Dispatch on Thursday, standing where he had found the shell casings three weeks before. “That morning, it was so close it couldn’t help but wake me up.”
So far, human casualties from these shooting incidents have been low — one person was treated at the hospital Dec. 10 after being shot in the arm with a pellet gun. The toll is mounting in other ways on this western Lowndes County community of 600 residents.
Fear is rising. Homes, vehicles and other property have been damaged. Most recently, town officials canceled the annual Christmas parade on three days’ notice due to concerns someone might get hurt. It was the second straight year the town went without its Christmas parade — one of its two major annual events — with the 2020 parade canceled because of COVID-19.
Planning for the event’s grand return began in September, Mayor Deane Parson said, and 50 participants had signed up.
“We were going to have four-wheelers, antique cars, horses,” Parson said. “We had a whole lot planned. I had to call them all back and tell them not to come.”
Most troubling to Parson is none of the shooters have been caught.
“Nobody knows who’s doing it,” she said.
The challenges
Starting in summer, Sheriff Eddie Hawkins said his department started receiving occasional shots-fired calls that often turned out to be people shooting at targets within the town limits.
“We’d tell (those shooting at targets) that somebody called it in to complain, and they’d agree to go target-practice somewhere else,” Hawkins said.
The reports have escalated, Hawkins said, with residents calling in random late-night reports of shots fired like the one Dec. 4, as well as other claims of people riding into town and firing weapons. Most recently, he said, a Crawford resident sent him a video of what appears to be a teenager walking down a street shooting an AR-15 into the air.
When deputies respond to the calls, Hawkins said they haven’t witnessed any of the shootings — outside of those target-practicing — though they have seen some of the property damage incurred.
“We’ve seen vehicles, homes and mailboxes with bullet holes,” he said.
When they try to get information, deputies encounter a wall of non-cooperation.
“Nobody will tell you anything,” Hawkins said. “Nobody can tell us what any of (the shooters’) vehicles look like, a tag number. Nothing. … I guess some are scared some kid’s going to come back and shoot up their house.”
Another complication is the role of county law enforcement within the town limits. Parson said Crawford has an ordinance prohibiting shooting in town, but Hawkins said since it’s legal to shoot a firearm in the county, his deputies cannot enforce that ordinance.
The town instead would need a city police officer for that task, something it hasn’t had in several years. Parson said she and aldermen all support the idea of hiring a part-time police officer, but right now there’s no funding available for that position.
“That’s the next key job we’re talking about filling,” Parson said.
Injury or property damage fall under state law, though, and Hawkins said with community cooperation his deputies might make some headway.
“If he’s just shooting up in the air, there’s not much we can do about it,” Hawkins said, using the example of the teen in the video with the assault rifle. “If we could identify him, we’d at least know who he was (if somebody was injured or their property damaged) and could talk to him.”
Community response
Hawkins met with Parson and several Crawford residents at a community meeting on Tuesday evening. Since then, deputies have increased patrols significantly in Crawford, which has tamped down the problem for now, Parson said.
Soon, Hawkins plans to install surveillance cameras at various points in town to help start catching some of the shooters. Parson said she plans to ask the Mississippi Housing Authority to install permanent surveillance cameras and better lighting at a public housing complex on Lodge Street where she believes the problems are stemming.
As for the citizens, many have agreed to help form neighborhood watch groups.
Lowery said he’s happy to help watch out for his neighbors on Main Street.
“I’ll do what I can do,” he said. “I live in this town. We’ll have to work together some kind of way if we want things to change.”
Jordan, despite his knee-jerk concerns about staying in Crawford when he saw the bullet hole in his wife’s car, isn’t going anywhere. He’s also committed to help with neighborhood watch any way he can.
“Everybody needs to be involved,” Jordan said. “Lots of folks think they aren’t involved until they get shot.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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