O’Kelly lives just inside the police perimeter that was set up on Mahrt Avenue near Juneva Place for most of Monday afternoon and evening.
“I heard three shots and then within five minutes I heard a ‘bang,’” she said.
She not only heard gunshots, she said she also saw several people put onto stretchers. “The sirens I heard were all the ambulances coming in. They loaded three different people that I could see, one of them right in front of my house. And, yeah… pretty scary.”
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office said they were called to the southeast Salem neighborhood around 12:30 for a possible hostage situation at one of the houses. They said when deputies got there a negotiator called the suspect. But they’re not sharing many details from there, only saying as things unfolded there were shots fired and multiple people died, including the suspect.
Brian Johnson lives nearby. He said, “It’s kind of scary, I know the worlds kind of turned into a different direction. There’s a lot of children and families around here so it’s kind of disturbing.”
The sheriff’s office has not said who fired those shots, why, or exactly how many people died. We do know none of the deputies were hurt.
Johnson said, “I’d like to have some more information kind of find out what happened and yeah, know why it happened.”
As Oregon State Police investigates, the Marion County Sheriff’s deputies involved in the shooting are on administrative leave.
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