LITHIA SPRINGS, Ga. -- Residents in the Trail Creek Subdivision in Lithia Springs were startled by loud gunshots ringing in the New Year Sunday night.
"It's every year, almost," said resident Stephanie Godfrey. "This year was really bad. Actually, it's worse than what I've heard before. It was competitive gunshots."
While this is a practice that occurs in many parts of metro Atlanta on New Year's Eve, in this particular neighborhood, the noise was particularly loud and frightening for some residents.
"It was really loud, actually. A bunch of gunshots -- loud. The kids actually woke up, screaming and crying. It scared them," said Stephanie Godfrey. "We had to get up and get them to comfort them -- calm them down and let them know it's just fireworks."
Another resident, who declined to be identified, shot a video of the gunshots that occurred shortly after midnight.
"They get pretty rowdy every holiday," she said. "You get used to it. Unfortunately, it's become pretty common."
She says that there were kids playing outside during the booming noise that permeated the darkness.
"I was like, do we live in Iraq now?" she said. "There's no reason to be shooting guns."
As she shot the video, one gunshot could be heard whizzing by her and striking her house -- which quickly forced her back inside.
11Alive's Neima Abdulahi has reached out to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office for a comment on the incident but has not heard back as of this point.
