A K-9 unit officer stops while on patrol to talk with a friend near the house, background, where two people were shot early Thursday morning. One person was killed and another was wounded in the shooting, which occurred just after midnight in the 2300 block of East 17th Street.BY THE NUMBERS• 16 – Homicides in Chattanooga as of Thursday• 14 – Fatal shootings• 40 – Shooting incidents with injury (does not include number of victims)Source: Times Free Press records
Blood still stained the doorway of a small East Side home Thursday morning, a few hours after a man was shot to death and his girlfriend seriously wounded in a home robbery.
“She was propping the door open with her body, and you could tell she was still bleeding really bad when [paramedics] moved her,” said Brooke Floyd, who lives across the street on East 17th Street, one street down from East Side Elementary School.
The woman, 38-year-old Yetta Harris, was shot in the stomach and the chest, but is expected to survive after surgery, said Chattanooga Police Department spokeswoman Sgt. Jerri Weary.
James Frederick Williams Jr., 23, died after an assailant fired multiple gunshots into his chest during a robbery, according to Chattanooga Police spokeswoman Sgt. Jerri Weary. He is Chattanooga’s 16th homicide of the year.