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• One dead in Killeen home invasion

August 21, 2007 (Killeen, TX) – A predawn home invasion at a Killeen apartment left 43-year-old Anthony Jerome Hemingway Sr. dead of gunshot wounds and another man who police identified as the intruder seriously wounded by returned gunfire.

Shots went through the three units of the residence, with other occupants saying if the timing had been a little different there could have been several more casualties.

Police were summoned after 6:30 a.m. Monday by a resident in a townhouse triplex in the 1500 block of Windward Drive who reported a home invasion, said Carroll Smith, spokeswoman for the Killeen Police Department.

Officers en route were advised shots had been fired inside the apartment, she said.

On arrival, police found Hemingway, the apartment owner, dead from gunshot wounds and his alleged attacker, a man as yet unidentified, in critical condition from gunshot wounds.

The suspect was flown by air ambulance to Scott and White Memorial Hospital in Temple where he was listed in critical condition late Monday.

After the intruder gained entry to Unit C, gunfire erupted. Bullets traveled through the walls of an upstairs bedroom to the adjoining apartment - Unit B.

One shot traversed all three apartments until it fell in the bedroom of 3-year-old Breann Dickerson in apartment Unit A.

Kim Holmes in Unit B said she was sleeping downstairs on her living room couch because her daughter, 20, and 3-month-old granddaughter stayed overnight in her bed upstairs.

She said she was awakened about 6:30 a.m. by a loud crashing noise from the kitchen area of her neighbor’s apartment. She said she was told later an intruder had kicked in the rear glass door panel. Then she heard a struggle.

“It sounded like men wrestling and shouting,” she said. “Then I heard this loud BANG!”

“I was still groggy trying to wake up,” she said. “Then I heard BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-POW-POW-POW!”

“My daughter started screaming upstairs,” Ms. Holmes said. “I thought something happened to her and my grandbaby.”

She said her daughter screamed for her to come upstairs - that someone was shooting.

“I said no way,” Ms. Holmes said. “Then I heard another POW-POW-POW! My daughter screamed there were bullet holes in the bedroom wall. Running up the stairs I saw six bullet holes in the stairwell.”

In the master bedroom the wall behind the bed where her daughter and granddaughter had been sleeping had a half dozen bullet holes just 24 inches above the bed.

“She was lying down with the baby,” Ms. Holmes said. “If she had sat up in bed just minutes before to tend to the baby they would both be dead.”

One bullet pierced a glass picture frame. Shards of glass covered the bed. Ms. Holmes said her granddaughter was screaming and her face was covered in glass.

In all Ms. Holmes said she counted 14 bullet holes in her walls upstairs. One shattered a picture frame next to a front window. Another went through a set of floral curtains. She said rounds could be heard ricocheting through walls when the shootout was at its height.

“I don’t know what this was about,” Ms. Holmes said. “My neighbor A.J. was very kind and hospitable. He had a family. He went to work. There was no trouble over there.”

-By Harper Scott Clark, Temple Daily Telegram Staff Writer