Harris County crime: Man arrested, charged with opening fire on his neighborhood with an AR-15
HARRIS COUNTY, Texas - A man is in jail after investigators say he opened fire on his own Northeast Harris County neighborhood with an AR-15.
The Sunday morning shooting left homes riddled with bullet holes in the Highlands neighborhood where investigators say 33-year-old Garrett Wilder shot at his own neighbors with an AR-15. After the shooting, detectives say they took three AR 15's from Wilder and a 12-gauge shotgun.
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"I was getting ready for church, and it sounded like a war zone, and we couldn't figure out what it was. All the guys in the neighborhood started on their four-wheelers trying to figure out where it came from, and they found out. He was shooting out of the front windows of this house. They're all busted out. (How terrifying is that?) It's horrible. We could have been killed," says one woman who lives nearby.
Residents say it is literally a miracle no one was shot. They tell me a 72-year-old man was standing in his own driveway, and they say the man across the street started yelling at the 72-year-old to get off his property, and according to court records, Wilder opened fire right through the window.
The 72-year-old who was being shot at has lived in the neighborhood for decades, but the man who was doing the shooting, has been renting the house for less than a month.
"This is no good. I mean we have people that live all around here. We have bullet holes in these homes over here," one neighbor explains.
"You can see all the bullet holes just in the mini-blinds. It had to have been 50 rounds or more. Everybody that was in their homes had a chance of getting hit. It's scary," says one man.
"The guy was shooting for over an hour. Bullets went across on the other side over there, of the canal," another woman adds.
"I'd say 7:15 a.m., I left to go to church at 8 o'clock, and it was still going on. (Even with the shooting you left to go to church?) Yeah. I probably shouldn't have, but I said I'm going to church to pray, and I did," says another neighbor.
"Then this happened at one something this morning. The truck caught on fire. That's a separate incident," another woman explains as she points out, hours after the shooting, while Wilder was in jail, someone set his truck on fire.
Neighbors say in the short time he's lived here there is a lot of traffic in and out of his home at all times of day and night.