Man points rifle at UNC students over weekend, no shots fired

When seniors Brian Doran and Jeff Schafer went out Friday, they expected it to be a regular night with their roommates.

But before returning home, Doran, Schafer and six of their friends were assaulted with a rifle.

After the group left La Residence Restaurant & Bar around 2 a.m., Doran, one of the two designated drivers, said two men driving a white or silver SUV approached them in the parking lot near Rosemary Street and Pritchard Avenue.

“They thought we were trying to mess with their girls’ car,” Doran said.

Then the situation escalated.

“It just turned into a macho thing, but it would have been two versus eight,” Doran said. “Then the passenger got out of the car and said to me, ‘Yo mohawk, you better get back in your car,’ and he pulled out a gun.”

Schafer said he and his other friends all saw the gun, which he compared to an AK-47, before Doran noticed it and knew they needed to leave.

“By the time I realized there was a gun, it was too late,” Doran said. “If he wanted to shoot me, I was done.”

Doran managed to get into his car to drive his other friends home but said the men were banging on the sides of his car as he drove away.

“I’m from Jersey, so this s—- happens there all the time,” Doran said. “But you never expect it in Chapel Hill.”

Chapel Hill Police Department spokesman Lt. Kevin Gunter said incidents like this rarely ever happen in Chapel Hill, but there was another case of assault by pulling a gun over the three-day weekend.

The other incident happened Monday morning at the intersection of East Franklin and Henderson streets, but Gunter said he does not suspect the cases to be related.

“It may be very hard to identify who the owner of the gun was in this case, especially since rifles are handled differently than handguns,” he said.

While the sheriff’s office is in charge of gun registration, Gunter said many people in the area own rifles for hunting purposes.

“This is a weapon that someone could possess legally, but obviously it’s illegal to point it at another human being,” he said.

Doran and Schafer said they waited to report the incident until the next day but realize now they should have called immediately after it happened.

“We actually told the story the next night when we went out, and people didn’t believe us,” Doran said.

After the report was filed, Gunter said the department notified surrounding precincts of the incident and sent out a description of the car, but the department has no leads at this time.

Although Schafer had never been in a situation like this before, he said he was surprised it became as serious as it did.

“It’s one of those things that you look back on and laugh at, but it wasn’t a laughing matter at the time,” he said. “Now a good night is measured by not getting a gun pulled on us.”

Contact the City Editor at city@dailytarheel.com.