Newlyweds Recover After Bullets Tear Through Midtown Montgomery Home
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WAKA) — The phone rang just after 3 a.m. Wednesday, jolting Bolling Holt and his wife awake.
It was a call from Holt’s stepson.
Then, almost as quickly as it began, the call ended.
“The call immediately ended, so we didn’t know what was going on,” Holt said. “So we pulled up the security footage on our phone, and by the time we got in, we saw mayhem.”
What they discovered was every family’s nightmare.
Gunfire had ripped through the front of the young couple’s Midtown Montgomery home, sending bullets through the walls as Holt’s 21-year-old stepson and his 19-year-old daughter-in-law sat in their living room assembling furniture. The couple, newly married, had been spending a quiet evening together with a shipment that had just arrived from her parents overseas.
“They were actually putting together some wedding furniture,” Holt said. “They’re young and they stay up late. They had gotten a shipment from her parents in England, and they were putting together some furniture and having a nice night together like newlyweds would do.”
Instead, both were struck by gunfire.
Holt’s stepson was shot in the arm. His daughter-in-law was shot in the leg.
Holt and his wife rushed to the hospital, unsure whether the young couple had survived.
“We were scared to death,” he said. “When we first got there, we were assuming the worst because nobody could tell us anything. Our fears went to the worst place possible. When we learned they were still alive with non-life-threatening injuries, that was a relief to us because we knew that no matter what happened, they were going to live.”
Seeing them in their hospital beds was heartbreaking.
“When we got there, all we could see was my stepson with a hole straight through his arm with a broken ulna, which absolutely broke our hearts,” Holt said. “And my little daughter-in-law sitting there with her leg all wrapped up, in a new country without her parents. Her parents are on another continent.”
Holt’s daughter-in-law recently moved to Montgomery after marrying his stepson.
“He’s 21. She’s 19,” Holt said. “She just moved to the United States from overseas, and this is her welcome to the United States — her first Independence Day weekend. Not the best way to come over here.”
As the young couple continues recovering in a Montgomery hospital, Holt said his family remains focused on gratitude, believing the outcome could have been much worse.
“Thank God, and it’s by the grace of God only that they survived this,” he said.
At the same time, Holt hopes the violence that shattered his family’s home will spark change.
“Montgomery is very important to me,” he said. “My family is even more important to me, and we must have more police in this town.”
So far, police have not announced any arrests as the investigation continues.
