Neighbors are reeling after Rocky Mount’s first adult homicide in more than 20 years Monday night.

Authorities have arrested two people in the shooting death of 26-year-old Tony Dimitri Bruce, who was killed Monday night on Bland Street.

So far, police are only telling us that two suspects were arrested early Tuesday morning in Axton, Henry County.
At least one neighbor plans on moving after hearing the shooting next door.

“I was just thinking, like, please let us be safe,” said a woman who lives next door. She asked to be anonymous to protect her family’s safety, which includes her seven-year-old daughter and her unborn child.

“She [my daughter] won’t even go to the bathroom now without someone coming with her. And I know just being in this house – and looking at the stuff in the walls – it’s a lot for her,” the woman said.

She says she was sick and laying in bed at the time, when her daughter heard this.

“I only heard four gunshots, but first I heard the ‘pop pop,'” the child said.

“Her dad immediately rushed her upstairs, went into my room, grabbed me, put us in her room, shoved us in her closet, got us down, and put her dresser in front of us because that was the biggest, bulkiest thing that we had,” the woman said.

She says she heard the shots around 7:30 p.m., and officers were out investigating in the rain for hours.

“Being crouched down in the closet, squeezing her, and she’s crying the whole time. She wants to leave, she wants to leave, and it didn’t help that – even after the situation – we still couldn’t leave because we were blocked in,” the woman said.

Investigators had to cut out a part of the wall to get to one bullet. Another went straight through a coffee cup. She’s been cleaning the mess all afternoon.

“I was just- I was tired of looking at it. And I’m like ‘yeah, I’ve seen enough,'” the woman said.

She’s lived in the house since 2014 – but has already started packing to move.

“It’s just awful, especially for her being so young. And I hate that she even- she’s old enough to understand, so it’s even worse,” the woman said.

The assistant town manager tells WFXR Monday night’s pouring rain made evidence-gathering harder, and that half of Rocky Mount’s police force was involved in the case. No one was available for an interview because many had worked more than 30 hours straight.