While police were investigating, they made a disturbing discovery - a badly beaten woman inside the trunk of a vehicle.
The shooting happened in the 300 block of East Moore Street in Norristown.
Mary English and her three children were asleep upstairs when a gun battle broke out outside her home. A stray bullet pierced her window.
"I woke up with a bullet hole in my window and gunshots being sprayed outside my front door," explains English. "[The bullet] came through the front window and came all the way through to my kitchen."
Norristown Police Chief Russell Bono says, "This could have been a real tragedy - innocent people in a residential neighborhood, sleeping at 4:30 in the morning, and bullets were flying around. It's utter madness."
Officers heard the gunshots around 4:30 Tuesday morning from the parking lot of the nearby police station. They rushed to the 300 block of East Moore Street and saw a man on the sidewalk who had been shot. Then they discovered two other men with gunshot wounds inside a house directly across the street.
They soon made a fourth discovery.
Chief Bono tells us, "Officers on the scene heard screams and couldn't exactly tell where they were coming from but then noticed that they were coming from the trunk of the car."
The girlfriend of one of the men who had been shot was found bound and beaten in the trunk of a bullet riddled Mazda sedan. Police believe she was about to be abducted. At least ten bullet holes were in the passenger side of the Mazda. More than a dozen shell casings were scattered on the street and in the doorway of a home. A semi-automatic TEC-9 machine pistol was found in the trunk.
"It's capable of holding multiple rounds that can be fired just as fast as you can pull the trigger. It's a very dangerous weapon. Certainly doesn't belong in a residential neighborhood," said Chief Bono.
Police believe there were multiple weapons used here. Authorities are still sorting through who are considered suspects and victims here. One person was being questioned by police as of 4:30 p.m. Three others were being treated at the University of Pennsylvania and police had not yet interviewed them.
Police have also executed search warrants looking for other weapons and people who might have been involved. Witnesses reported seeing at least one person running from the scene.
The woman who was in the car's trunk was treated for her injuries and released from the hospital and is now cooperating with authorities in their investigation.
