Wooten Park Drive residents fed up with crime

Ampy McDonald says she's lived on Wooten Park Drive in North Austin for about 25 years.  

She says crime was bad when she got there and it's just gotten worse.  

"Oh I've seen people stabbed, people die...I've seen a lot of things," McDonald said. 

The neighborhood is the site of a mysterious shooting Sunday evening that injured a man and left his infant child in critical condition with multiple gunshot wounds.  

According to Austin Police, a shooter or shooters randomly fired into an apartment while the 10-month old slept on the couch.  

"And I hope they catch whoever did it because that is a big 'no, no' I mean that's horrible," McDonald said.

Eduardo Vera lives in an apartment above where the shooting happened.  He knows the victims.  He told us Monday.

"Yeah I still feel safe around here but I mean been here 20 plus years in this neighborhood, never really had anything happen at these apartments," Vera said.

But not everyone on the street feels that way.  

On Tuesday we spoke with two people off-camera who said they don't feel safe on Wooten Park Drive.

One of them told me after Sunday's shooting she contacted her landlord about moving out.

Looking back through the Fox 7 Austin archives, a murder was being investigated on Wooten Park Drive in 2008.  

A man was punched in the face over a stolen soda.  He fell to the ground, hit his head and later died.
 
According to a crime statistic search, over the past 2 years there haven't been any murders in the Wooten Neighborhood but there have been 16 robberies, 30 aggravated assaults and 114 burglaries.
 
"More security, more police security.  They need to go by here a little more often, they do go by every once in a while," McDonald said.
 
McDonald says over the years neighbors have been shot, she says she witnessed a crime committed with a machete and one time some thieves crossed through her backyard.
 
"I put up chains and locks on the gates.  It's just we never know, you can't be too safe," she said.
 
When asked whether she feels safe on the street, McDonald says 'she's ok.'  She has dogs that hear everything and she looks out her window before answering her door.

"My relatives don't like for me to live here because of all the things that always goes on.  But it's centrally located for me, I can either go north, south, east or west," McDonald said.

Austin Police say if you have any information about Sunday night's shooting, no matter how irrelevant it may seem, call police.