Boone County Sheriff’s Department deputies are searching for suspects in two shootings that occurred overnight between Wednesday and Thursday in the Columbia area.
A woman was shot in the hand when a bullet was fired into her Demaret Drive apartment, located east of Columbia in the Lake of the Woods area. She was taken to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries, Boone County Sheriff’s Detective Tom O’Sullivan said. Her two children who were also in the apartment at the time of the shooting were uninjured.
Deputies were dispatched to Demaret Drive at approximately 12:30 a.m. Two hours earlier, deputies were sent to Southview Drive to investigate a report of shots fired. At the scene, the deputies located a residence with bullet holes. According to a Boone County Sheriff’s Department news release, the residence was unoccupied and no injuries were reported.
Although the two incidents occurred in different ends of Columbia, deputies are investigating the possibility that the two shootings could be connected.
“We have to look at the possibility that the two (shootings) were related given the relatively short period of time in which the two incidents occurred,” O’Sullivan said.
In the Demaret Drive shooting, witnesses reported seeing two males arguing in front of the apartment building. Witnesses said they heard as many as 20 gunshots. Bullet holes were located in the woman’s apartment and another nearby apartment building. According to the news release, a witness also reported seeing white and gold four-door sedans leave the scene shortly after the shooting.
The sheriff’s department has not released descriptions of any Southview shooting suspects.
O’Sullivan said Demaret Drive is one of the most frequent sites to which deputies are dispatched.
“Demaret Drive continues to be a major problem for us,” O’Sullivan said. “We’ve been out there, since the first of the year, 500 times.”
Although O’Sullivan said the 500 dispatches to Demaret Drive include routine drives through the area, the Thursday morning shooting was the seventh shots-fired call to come from the street since Jan. 1.
Deputies have also responded to previous disturbances on Southview Drive, but O’Sullivan said the street is generally quieter than Demaret.
“We’ve had problems down there before but (Southview) is a much smaller street,” he said.
Anyone with information about the shootings should call Crime Stoppers at 875-TIPS. Calls are anonymous and a reward is available.