Mass shooting witness describes what she saw from a bird's eye view

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) - A witness of Saturday night’s mass shooting in Birmingham says she heard, saw, and felt it happen from a bird’s eye view.

Someone shot into a group of people standing outside in Five Points South and killed four people while hurting 17 others.

The witness lives in a high-rise apartment only a couple blocks away with her window facing toward where the awful scene happened.

“I just can’t get the sounds out of my head and what I’ve seen,” said Crystal Berry. “It’s very traumatic.”

74-year-old Crystal Berry says she’ll never forget this incident.

“I said, oh my god that was a hell of a shooting,” she added. “Working in the medical field for 30 years, I never thought I’d experience something like this in all my life.”

She saw it all happen from a window 15 floors up.

“I walked in and was getting my gown on, and I heard *bubububu* and guns sounds and I literally ran over to the window and I looked out and when I did, I saw two 3-wheeled motorcycles with a black car right on their tail and they were flying,” she described. “I mean, like 50 miles an hour by the time they got there and I did like that to see them out of the way.”

She said the motorcycles and the car were so loud, the sounds shook her windows.

Berry, who worked as a respiratory therapist in the NICU, said she was overwhelmed by the quick response: “I had never seen as many first aid responders in my life... It was ambulance after ambulance after ambulance and fire engine after fire engine.”

While first responders were on scene, Berry said the same car that sped from the scene returned.

“I saw that same black car and the reason I know it was is because of the sound of it’s motor and I said look, that is the same car,” she explained. “This is crazy! How would someone be that evil to come back and see what they’ve done?”

Berry said she’s lived in the area for five years now and though she loves it, the surrounding violence is getting worse.

“What’s it like for the people on lower floors than me that are older and sicker than I am?” she wondered. “This is so hard for all of us elderly people to go through all this every weekend, every Friday and Saturday and Sunday.”

She, along with police, are asking now for anyone who saw something related to the shooting to speak up so police can catch the criminals who did it.

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