HOWARD COUNTY, Md. — Early Saturday morning, Howard County Police found a 20-year-old man in a car behind an office building on the 8800 block of Centre Park Drive.
The man had suffered from multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead on the scene.
Hours later, around 9 p.m., police got a call about a shooting in the area, this time across the street at the shopping plaza, where they found 2 teen boys suffering from gunshot wounds, one 16 and the other 17.
“You don’t expect it, I mean, do you do you think of Howard County as a pretty safe place? You know they have so many news articles about how Howard County is the safest place in America and you want to raise your children here, and it’s pretty you know interesting to me that this has happened and I don’t hear anything," says Tysheron Grant.
Howard County Police found the 20-year-old Baltimore man who was shot in a car during a routine check of the area. Police are not sure yet when he was actually killed.
Jeanne Martin, who lived in Columbia for over 30 years, says she has never heard of anything like this before.
“That doesn’t happen here, and I know everybody says that, but no, it doesn’t happen here. I mean, it’s a nice community; it's a really nice community," says Martin.
Neighbors like Tysheron Grant say he is concerned that he didn’t hear about the shootings sooner, and with police not having any leads, he worries for people’s safety.
“It makes me uncomfortable to be quite honest with you. Back here, as you can see, we only have maybe one or two buses that run, so think about the people that don’t have cars, right, and they won’t hear about this information. Now fortunately I have a car so I can take my kids and drive them anywhere out of here, but what if I didn’t and I'm over here at the shopping center waiting on the bus now and some people are being shot? That’s ridiculous," he says.
Martin says this is just another example of the increase in violence in the country.
“It's got to stop; its just not fair. I worry for my kids. My youngest is 21, and I think what is it going to be like for her 10 years from now?" says Martin.
The 2 teens who were shot were transported to the University of Maryland shock trauma center with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.
The identities of the 3 victims have not yet been released.
Howard County police do not have any information on suspects of either one of the shootings at this time.
