One man is dead and another is in hospital with life-threatening injuries after police responded to the sound of gunfire early Tuesday morning.
Shortly after midnight, officers attended Lednum and Leon streets where they were told a man had already been taken to hospital with serious injuries.
Officers then found a man in the 2300 block of Lednum Street who had also been shot and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police have not released any further information.
Durham continues to struggle with gun violence. The City Council voted to end ShotSpotter, a gunshot monitoring system, after a study by a Duke University researcher found that the audio sensors were more likely to prompt police to film scenes but did not reduce the number of shootings.
Then Durham County recently ended Bull City United, a violence-interruption program that used former gang members and others to defuse neighborhood conflicts. That decision came after several outreach workers were charged with crimes,
Shootings resulting in injuries were up 19% as of Oct. 19, according to the most recent police statistics. A total of 188 people had been shot dead, compared to 158 at the same time last year.
However, the number of fatal shootings and other homicides has decreased.
As of November 2, 31 murders had been reported in Durham.
That was down from 42 murders on the same date in 2023 and 39 in 2022, police statistics show.
Anyone with information about this latest incident is asked to call investigator DN Hall at 919-560-4440 ext. 29319 or CrimeStoppers at 919-683-1200 or online at www.durhamcrimestoppers.org. CrimeStoppers pays cash rewards of up to $2,000 for information leading to arrests in felony cases and callers never have to identify themselves.
