PORTSMOUTH, Va - A Portsmouth couple says their home got shot up in a drive-by shooting. The gunfire isn't the only thing the couple says that is shocking. They say it took police more than four hours to show up.
"I turned my head to look at the television and it was ‘boom, boom, boom.’ And glass was shattering and I seen it flying everywhere," Sherry Manning-Tennessee said.
Sherry Manning-Tennessee says she and her husband were about to order dinner when someone drove by shooting into her house.
"Had that TV not stopped that bullet, as you can see it would have followed straight to me. I’d either be dead or seriously hurt," Manning-Tennessee said.
She says a metal plate in the television stopped the bullet from hitting her.
"I started to watch channel 3 news and this came up on the screen," she said.
Gunshots even broke their glass screen door. The couple says eight bullets hit their home. But it wasn’t only the drive-by shooting in her quiet neighborhood that bothered her. She says the police response time to get out to her Portsmouth neighborhood was alarming.
"We called them at about 10 after 5 p.m. and they didn’t get here until around 10:30," Manning-Tennessee said.
"Does that shock you?" News 3's Leondra Head asked her.
"Yes, because I called once then I called 911 again because it was starting to get dark. I literally gave them hours. They just told me when someone’s available we’ll send them out," Manning-Tennessee said.
"How did that make you feel?" Head asked.
"It made me feel like I wasn’t very important and the second time I called, they said the same thing. No one said sorry," Manning-Tennessee said.
The Portsmouth Police Department currently has 80 vacancies.
"There’s a problem with the police department in Portsmouth. These people that are doing the drive-bys and doing all these shootings now they are shorthanded. They know they got a better chance of doing all of this," Manning-Tennessee said.
She says officers eventually showed up.
"The two officers that came were very kind, they did their job. Evidence could have gotten messed up. They were a little upset my son went out there and picked up all the shells," Manning-Tennessee said.
Police did not get back to News 3 when asked if staffing shortages impact response times.
