CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Before midnight on New Year's Eve, Susan Foster heard a loud bang outside her home in the 4400 block of Willow Street. She went out her back door and looked to see what caused the disturbance. She thought it may be firecrackers. She checked out her front door and found nothing again.
“Oh my goodness somebody was shooting fire- it was a gun. It was really loud, it got me up,” said Foster.
The next day she got her answer.
“I just came out and looked inside, there was glass all on the inside of my car," she said. "And, I didn’t know where it came from. So, I got back out and went to the front and I could see where it hit the top of my windshield.”
She found a dent the size of a quarter on her windshield. A spider web crack. Pieces of broken glass on her seats and floors of her car.
But how did she know it was a gun shot?
"So when I looked and I didn't find it on the inside, that thing just rolled down here," Foster said pointing at the area of her wiper blades. "And it was sitting right here."
It was a small caliber bullet that clearly had impacted something.
Foster called her insurance company and the Corpus Christi Police Department (CCPD)
“Every call that we get that come in, officers will get dispatched to those,” said Lt. Michael Pena of CCPD.
Pena said the department gets numerous calls for fireworks and gun shots on New Year's Eve. He said someone will go out for all the calls.
Foster tried filing a report by calling the non-emergency number.
"I was leaving to run up to the store and the guy that answered the 911 non emergency told me that I would have to be home before I could do anything.
Foster wasn't able to file her report then.
Nonetheless, Pena said those kinds of calls are difficult to handle.
“That's the difficulty of it," he said. Somebody will call in about gun fire or fireworks. That goes to the dispatcher, dispatcher gives it to an officer, the officer needs to get to that area. So, in some cases, it’s no longer going on when the officer arrives there. But keep in mind officers are patrolling the city. They could just come across either one of those."
If you do have property damage from something like this, Pena said you can file a report over the phone. Foster said she is still interested in making a complaint.
“I just would like for people to stop shooting guns," said Foster. "Because somebody is going to get hurt as they did already."
Foster was referencing the 11-year-old girl who was killed by gun fire on New Year's Eve.
Foster said luckily, her insurance company told her she’s covered and can get a new windshield because they consider the damage to be vandalism.
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