VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) – Residents react to a violent night at the Indian Lakes apartment complex in Virginia Beach.
Saturday night’s shooting, which left one man dead and sent two others to the hospital, is just one in a string of dangerous scenes to unfold here in the last year.
Residents crowded in the cold Saturday night as Virginia Beach Police investigated the triple shooting.
Current resident Tkeyah Tucker says she initially didn’t think anything of the gunshots she heard Saturday night because she also heard some the previous night.
“The shootings that had just happened and then the fires, it’s just a lot,” she said.
Tucker, who’s expected to give birth in the next few weeks, says she’s a little nervous about living there once her son arrives.
“Me expecting a child on the way like, it doesn’t feel like much of it is a safe neighborhood as it was two or three years ago,” she said.
Allison Hodgkins and her husband lived in the complex for over a year until their apartment burned down in December, destroying everything they owned and killing their cat.
“My husband actually told me this morning he was like he’s kind of glad the fire happened because he’s glad we got out because it’s proven to be unsafe here,” she said.
Aside from maintenance workers at the complex, Hodgkins said property managers did not offer much help after the fire even though necessary safety measures weren’t working when the flames spread.
“All of the people I spoke to, said the smoke detectors did not go off,” Hodgkins said. “One of my friends said she like ran into her apartment a couple of times to try to grab the last few things that she could and not once was a smoke detector going off.”
Hodgkins and her husband have moved from the complex and says they are finally getting back on their feet.
She says she wanted to speak out to spark some real change to help her former neighbors.
“I’m very concerned about the safety of the residents here,” she said. “I need people to know like it is not safe to live here. There are no firewalls in the attic protecting people from fire and obviously, with what happened last night with the murder, it is not safe here.”
At this time, there’s no update on those two victims who were taken to the hospital last night.
We also reached out to the property group for comment but haven’t heard back yet.
