Shots fired
‘I don’t feel safe there anymore’
A New Waterford woman says she’s frightened to be in her home after it was riddled with what she believes were bullets last Saturday.
“I’m scared for my life,” said Ebony Hayward.
Hayward, 32, said last Saturday she was visiting a friend and, sometime between 6-7 p.m., as she returned to her home at 416 King St., something unusual about her front picture window caught her eye. “I thought, ‘what is this?’” she said. “Looking closer, I realized my window was full of bullet holes. “They were all right together in a circle pretty well.” Hayward said she believes the person responsible is someone known to her.
She ran to see if her neighbours knew anything and then immediately called the Cape Breton Regional Police Service.
“I didn’t go inside because I knew it was a crime scene,” she said. “I didn’t realize until later when the police put marks around them that there were actually 10 bullet holes.”
Hayward said police escorted her inside and she discovered a couple bullets had struck her television, with one going right through it.
“If I had of been sitting on my couch I’d be dead right now.”
She said she has three cats and one always lies in the window in front of the television.
“I was so scared when I walked in to find one of my cats dead, but they’re OK.”
Hayward said police then told her to leave the house.
“I packed up a bag of clothes and went to a friend’s house.”
She went back again on Sunday to get more clothes but called police first because she didn’t feel safe going in alone.
She said police responded and while in her house with an officer saw the person she feels is responsible for the shooting incident driving back and forth in front of her house.
“I told the police they were out there driving by. How are they getting away with this?”
She said she’s concerned police aren’t investigating this as they didn’t even take her bullet-riddled television as evidence.
“They’ve never even called to see how I was and if I was OK”
Hayward, who had also recently battled cancer, said what’s also disturbing is six of her nieces and nephews had stayed overnight with her on Friday.
“If one of them had of been shot I wouldn’t want to go on living anymore.”
Hayward has been living in the house for a year. She said the bank was in the process of repossessing it from the owner and she was working with the bank in hopes of purchasing it.
“I don’t know now if I want it anymore,” she said. “If someone is crazy enough to stop in front of my house and fire a gun they’ll do it again. I don’t feel safe there anymore.”
Josh Bishop, Hayward’s brother, said his sister is a sweet, hard-working woman who doesn’t deserve something like this to happen to her.
“Whoever did this to Ebony is a dangerous person that could have murdered her,” he said. “They need to be caught.”
Bishop said he hopes the police will offer a reward through CrimeStoppers to get the person responsible off the streets.
He also hopes the public will help.
“We need anyone who might have seen anything to contact the police.”
CBRPS spokesperson Desiree Vassallo said police are investigating a complaint of holes in a window of a house on King Street in New Waterford.
Vassallo said the force’s ident officers took necessary evidence which has been referred to the investigator to follow up on.
She said if anyone has any information or saw or heard anything in that area last Saturday they are asked to call police at 902-563-5151 or Crime Stoppers, 902-562-8477.