Safety concerns have been raised after a woman’s Sebastopol home was peppered with gunfire in a disturbing drive-by shooting.
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The late-night attack has prompted calls for residents of the Ballarat suburb to look out for each other following the incident on Jones Drive last week.
It’s believed shots were fired through a window of the house before a car sped from the street about 11.30pm on January 4.
Detectives arrived at the residential address shortly afterwards and established a crime scene, scouring the area for evidence late into the night.
Victoria Police spokeswoman Alex Day said on Tuesday that officers had confirmed a gun was used.
“A number of shots were fired through a window on January 4 at about 11.30pm,” Ms Day said.
“No one was injured during the incident and the investigation is ongoing.”
The house’s occupant, a woman believed to be in her 30s, was at home at the time and has been left traumatised following the attack.
A motivation for the shooting remains unclear.
Ballarat councillor Des Hudson, who is a long-time Sebastopol resident, said the community needed to support the woman and called for anyone with information to come forward.
“It could have been a terrible tragedy if somebody had been sitting in the line of the projectiles,” he said.
“(The offender) needs to think about what it would have been like for a family to lose a loved one and that they could face a significant amount of prison time.”
No arrests had been made over the incident as of Wednesday evening.
Police did not say whether they recovered any bullets or shotgun pellets.
A fence on Jones Drive had previously been spray painted with graffiti saying ‘Hell Street’ just metres away from where the shooting took place.
However, Cr Hudson, who is also a police officer, said Ballarat was a safe community to live in and incidents such as this shooting were rare.
“There’s a lot of people who have resided in Sebastopol all their lives and there’s a lot of pride – this could have happened anywhere in Ballarat,” he said.
“There’s going to be more than one person in that car.
“Someone should take up some leadership and stop something like that from happening.
“It’s absolutely dangerous.”
