(Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
By: Megan Barnes, Brian Rokos and Beatriz E. Valenzuela

SAN BERNARDINO, CA – Christine Roy woke up Sunday night to the sound of gunfire.

Countless shots rang through the courtyard of her apartment. Once the bullets stopped, Roy, 61, ran in terror to look for her son.

“It was scary,” she said, recalling the walk past her neighbors who lay on the ground, bleeding. “But I wasn’t going to quit until I found my son. So I kept going and looking for him.”

He was safe. But her neighborhood wasn’t. Not on this night.

A game of dice between neighbors in the courtyard of a San Bernardino apartment complex erupted in gunfire Sunday night, leaving two people, including a 17-year-old boy, in extremely critical condition and wounding six others, police said.

Multiple weapons were involved, said police, who have not ruled out that the gunfire was really a gun battle.

Police continued to investigate that question Monday as a teenager and an adult were being treated for gunshots to the head, and for non-life threatening wounds, police told reporters Monday from a bloodied sidewalk in front of the apartment complex on Lynwood Drive just east of Golden Avenue.

Police said finding cooperative witnesses has been challenging.

“There were multiple weapons used, and it appears there were multiple shooters, but we need someone to come forward to tell us that,” Capt. Richard Lawhead said. “There is evidence for us to believe there was a back-and-forth gun battle.”

Witnesses and victims were tight-lipped about the shooting that erupted around 10:45 p.m. Sunday during a dice game at the apartment complex at 1277 E. Lynwood Drive, north of the 210 Freeway and east of Waterman Avenue, officials said.

Officers in the area heard the shots ring out and responded while numerous calls were coming in reporting shots fired and people down. Arriving police officers found multiple victims with gunshot wounds, including some who were unresponsive.

For Roy, who has lived in the complex for more than five years, it was like seeing her family injured and bleeding on the ground.

“We say hi all of the time, everybody calls me ‘mama’ and ‘aunty’ around here,” Roy, who is close to most of the victims, said. “When I see them, they give me hugs. We have a little conversation asking how you’re doing today, what’s going on. A lot of people around here are like family.”

While officers applied first aid and called for medical aid, a hostile crowd came out of the complex, so police called in for backup from other agencies.

Descriptions of the suspects were limited, and there wasn’t any vehicle description. No firearms had been recovered in the incident that, Lawhead said, involved handguns and rifles.

This stretch of San Bernardino suffers from gang activity, but police said it was too early in the investigation to determine if the shooting could be attributed to a gang rivalry. The neighborhood often generates calls for loud parties but has not seen any violent crimes in recent months, Sgt. John Echevarria said.

Investigators were seen collecting bags of evidence behind crime tape from the courtyard of the middle of three green apartment buildings in the complex. Gates to the courtyard were mangled from someone driving into them earlier in the day Sunday, police said. It was unknown whether that incident was related to the gunshots.

“We did get a number of things here at the scene that take a lot of time to put together, however without that person who saw something, without that person who’s willing to come forward and cooperate, the good people that live in this neighborhood remain captive,” Lawhead said.

One neighbor heard the gunfire and ran outside to see a swarm of police and paramedics.

“I didn’t see the shooting, I just saw the bodies,” said Mystica Alcocer, who has lived in the complex for more than a year. “Whoever did it, these people didn’t deserve it. They could’ve duked it out like men and fought it out instead of bringing over a bunch of people and shooting. That was wrong.”

Residents of the apartments play dice on the ground outside just about every day, she said.

“It’s one of the past times here, and it’s usually fun and games,” Alcocer said. “You hear them laughing and joking around.”

It’s common to hear a couple of shots fired at night, Roy said. But this time was different, it felt like a war zone.

“When I heard the gunshots, I got up and I ran outside,” Roy said. “I was looking for my son because he frequents the area. When I got out, I saw a lady on the sidewalk, I went past her and found a boy shot near the doorway. I saw another child laying there, face down in the little courtyard inside of the building.”

Although Roy’s 35-year-old son is safe for now, she also worries for her grandchildren, 8 and 12, who live with her. Her other 4-year-old grandchild lives directly across the street.

“Be careful when you come over here,” Roy warned of her neighborhood, adding that she’s not confident that police will find out how this tragedy by her doorstep happened.

Some residents were unable to leave their apartments Monday morning, blocked in by crime-scene tape.

As media vans pulled up outside, a group of teenagers and others stood around recounting the events of the previous night. They said they were awoken by dozens of gunshots and knew the victims they saw bleeding on the ground. The shooting has left them not only worried about whether the victims will survive, but on edge for their own safety.

“I couldn’t really sleep last night – every time I dozed off, I saw pictures pop into my head,” said one pre-teen boy. “I tried to tell myself not to think about it, but it didn’t work.”

Gloria Heard, who doesn’t live at the complex, said she often sees dice games being played when she visits her sister, who lives here.

“I would’ve been here yesterday, too, and it scares me to think it could’ve been me, too,” she said.

The shooting comes days after community and faith leaders held a gathering calling for peace following a summer of deadly violence in San Bernardino.

That same day, Aug. 24, police said a gunman shot and killed a woman he had recently broken up with along with another woman, wounding a third.

Another recent, deadly shooting took place in the city at an apartment complex, and there was an arrest of a transient on suspicion of beating another homeless man to death.

Police asked anyone with information to call 909-384-5655 or to send text messages anonymously to 909-953-4673.

Staff writer Emily Rasmussen contributed to this report.

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