A southwest Berkeley resident was tidying up her living room on Monday afternoon when a bullet shot into her home and all the way across the room, missing her head by a foot or so and creating holes in two different walls.
The resident, who did not want to give her name, lives on the block of Burnett Street where two groups involved in an altercation shot at each other around 4:30 p.m. then fled, according to police.
The resident was utterly stunned when the bullet made an “explosion in the wall” and whizzed passed her face.
“I took a moment to realize what had happened,” she said. “I needed to have a little bit of a reality check.”
After gathering her wits, she called her husband and the police, who came and dislodged the bullet from the inside wall.
The resident said she heard the sound of tires screeching after the incident, but nobody was outside by the time she checked.
She said she has lived in the neighborhood, close to San Pablo Park, for several years, but had not witnessed any violence firsthand before. There have been other violent incidents in the immediate area in recent years, including the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old one year ago. Police arrested two young men associated with feuds between South and West Berkeley, according to BPD, in connection with a loaded gun found during a car stop a couple blocks away on Thursday.
“I feel this is really shaking me up and catching me up to reality — that there are gangs in my neighborhood,” she said.
The resident, a life coach with a Ph.D in psychology, said she feels grateful that she has studied how to handle trauma.
“It’s probably easier for me to deal with this situation. I have some resources for processing it,” she said.
