Woman arrives home to find apartment riddled with bullets after Willowbrook mass shooting
WILLOWBROOK, Ill. (CBS) -- In the wake of the mass shooting in Willowbrook over the weekend, a woman came home to find her very own residence riddled with bullets.
As CBS 2's Shardaa Gray reported, crime scene tape was still up Monday afternoon around Twanda Carroll's balcony. Carroll was not at home when the shots rang out during a Juneteenth celebration in a nearby parking lot at Route 83 and Honeysuckle Rose Lane – but she questions what would have happened to her if she had been sitting on her couch.
Carroll said she was in Wisconsin visiting family over the weekend. She decided to stay another day so she could see her daughter.
Carroll decided to stay in Wisconsin another day so she could see her daughter.
"And I got calls from my neighbor that my window was shattered; that it had been hit," Carroll said.
She came home to a shattered patio door, bullet holes inside of her apartment, and a broken window with a bullet hole.
"It could have been me," Carroll said. "I could have got shot."
Carroll described the path a bullet took into her bedroom.
"It hit these blinds. It was a little crack at the bottom. They repaired the window," Carroll said. and it went straight through my closet."
Carroll said her apartment was left looking like a war zone.
"It looked like, not quite like a war zone - but to me, because I've never been actually in this situation before, with holes all in my apartment," Carroll said.
She said her grandchildren visit her for the summer, and last year, they sat on her balcony and watched the celebration.
Carroll said there were no problems with the parking lot celebration last year or the year before. This year, one man – 31-year-old Reginald Meadows – was killed in a mass shooting during the celebration, and 22 others were wounded.
Carroll said she has many questions about what would have happened to her if she had decided to stay home.
"The way the holes are in my apartment, I don't even know what would have happened," she said. "You know, you never know until you're in that situation."
Carroll said the celebration should have been held somewhere else – since it is a residential area with a lot of kids.
"In the parking lot, next to two liquor stores - it's bound for something to happen," Carroll said.
