CINCINNATI -- Kaitlynn Patterson and Trent Rissover were getting ready for bed Wednesday night in their Northside home as if it were any other night, but it didn’t take long into Thursday morning when that all changed.
That’s when a bullet tore through the side of their house.
They said they’ve lived in the neighborhood for four years, and have loved it.
“We live here. We love this neighborhood. We love this house,” Patterson said. But, especially after Thursday morning’s incident, they said the shootings are starting to put them on edge.
The couple lives on Virginia Avenue: “We don’t want to have to move. I don’t want to hear (the gunshots) again. I don’t want to have to see it again,” she said.
Police were still investigating Friday the ballistic evidence surrounding the bullet hole, just feet from their bed.
“It’s a miracle no one was hurt,” Patterson told WCPO. “If it had been an hour later that we went to bed, we could have just been standing there.”
It was around 8:45 a.m. Thursday when Patterson called the police, she said. Because of heavy storm damage from Wednesday night, police said, it took officers until 3 p.m. to arrive and begin investigating.
But Patterson said she and her boyfriend are still on edge.
“(A shooting’s) not an uncommon occurrence,” she said. “I don’t think that any of us should have to feel that it’s becoming more common.”
Police records indicate that some 60 shootings have occurred in the neighborhood since 2010, with roughly a third taking place near Virginia Avenue. The years in that time period with the most shootings were 2011 and 2012 -- with 12 and 11 respectively -- right around when Patterson and Rissover would have moved into the area.
“I want to know it’s not going to happen again,” Patterson said. “When I come back here this is my safe place… emphasis on safe.”
WCPO reached out to Cincinnati police who said they followed up with the couple again Friday. They are asking any witnesses to the shooting to come forward.
