Anastasia Kitchen said the gunfire sounded like pops, like a car backfiring.

“When you hear gun shots, I guess you don’t know that’s what you’re hearing,” Kitchen said last Thursday, the day after an incident in which South Portland and Portland police exchanged gunfire with a man later identified as Terrel Dubois in an apartment at 204 Elm St. in South Portland.

Officer Steven Connors was shot four times while attempting to serve a warrant on Dubois. He was discharged from Maine Medical Center on Thursday, and continues to recover at home. Dubois, who also suffered gunshot wounds, is still being treated at the hospital, where he is under the guard of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department, Sgt. Steve Webster of the South Portland Police Department said Monday.

Kitchen, who lives at Apartment 7 in the building, said the incident was frightening, and she and others are concerned about their neighborhood.

Shortly after 7 p.m. on Oct. 11, officers from South Portland and Portland went to Apartment 1 at 204 Elm St. to serve multiple arrest warrants from Portland on Dubois. South Portland Police Chief Edward Googins said police had been searching for Dubois for the last couple weeks, and the Elm Street address was just one of several leads they were investigating.

“It sounded like 100 sirens were going off and all stopping in our driveway,” said Kitchen.

Police said Dubois was wanted on charges of kidnapping, two counts of criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon, terrorizing and violation of conditions of release from May 2006, said Portland Police Chief Tim Burton. Burton said Dubois had a previous history of assault.

Googins said when officers arrived at the residence, there was a heavy exchange of shooting, but police still have not released more details of the event. Googins said Connors’ hand injury was the most serious.

Kitchen said she heard screaming, but nothing that she could identify. There were officers with rifles drawn in front and in back of the apartments, said Kitchen. She said she saw a young female being put into a police car.

She said it was a disturbing scene for her 9-year-old son, Elijah, who visited his school counselor to talk about the shooting.

“He was afraid the perp was still loose,” said Kitchen.

“No one should have someone like that in my neighborhood,” said Kitchen of Dubois’ presence. She said she was disturbed there was someone so close to her home willing to use a gun.

Kitchen said some apartment building residents had some domestic issues now and again, but she never felt there would be someone with a gun who would use it. She said her son cried when he heard an officer was shot.

Jimmy Kloczko, who owns the Elm Street apartments through his company, Three Cows Inc. in Cape Elizabeth, said on Monday that Apartment 1 has been abandoned since the incident. He said the tenants had lived at the place for only a couple months.

Kloczko said he found the incident disturbing. He said he did not have any hints of violence or other illegal issues at the apartments.

Awat Habibi, 11, who lives off Broadway and across from the apartment building, said he witnessed most of the incident.

He said he and his brother were collecting rocks near the building for a school project.

“I heard some banging and all of a sudden I saw the police rush in,” he said.

Habibi said the police had assault rifles when they rushed in, and he saw people being brought out of the building in stretchers.

Googins said that during a search of the residence with a warrant early last Thursday morning, police found a small-caliber handgun believed to have been used by the suspect during the shooting, along with other evidence related to the incident.

There are ongoing investigations into Dubois and his associate, said Googins. He said police are working with the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office to determine what the charges against Dubois would be.

It was the first shooting of a police officer in South Portland that Googins remembered in his 12 years with the department, and the first use of deadly force used since 1994.

The apartment building on Elm Street where a South Portland police officer was shot during an exchange of gun fire on Wednesday, Oct. 11. One of the bullet holes from the encounter between police and Terrel Dubois on the evening of Oct. 11.Terrel Dubois

Copy the Story Link