A Scotland fan woke up to a “terrifying” scene this week while staying at a Massachusetts hotel during the World Cup. Stuart Mackelvie, who flew out to Boston for the World Cup match against Morocco, was asleep at the Sturbridge Plaza Hotel when a car crashed into the building and a shooting erupted.
The frightening incident occurred early Thursday morning in Sturbridge, around 60 miles outside of Boston. Shortly after Mackelvie had gotten to bed at around 1 a.m., a car crashed through the hotel wall, directly beneath the room where he was staying.
That, however, wasn’t the scariest part. After the driver of the car crashed into the hotel, she began firing a gun. A few minutes later, three ambulances and multiple police officers showed up.
“I heard gunshots and then I looked out the window again and a lady had driven her SUV into the side of the hotel and then she jumped out and was shouting, ‘Where are you? Where are you?’ and then shot three times quickly, it seemed like, into the hotel room,” CBS News reports Mackelvie said about the incident.
“Then I heard smashing glass, and I think she maybe climbed into the room and then there was loads of banging and stuff like she was trying to break a door down or something and then I called 911.”
The Scotland fan called the entire ordeal ‘terrifying’
“It was terrifying. I thought I could kind of tell it was targeted. It wasn’t like a random shooter wandering around the hotel,” Mackelvie continued, adding that police officers knocked on every door, checked on guests throughout the hotel and took statements.
Boston.com reported that one person died and another was hospitalized with gunshot wounds during the incident, based on dispatch recordings from Broadcastify. In a statement, Sturbridge Police Chief Earl Dessert asked “the public to avoid speculation and allow investigators the time necessary to conduct a thorough and complete investigation.”
“I’ve seen this stuff on TV, but I’ve never been anywhere near anything like this,” Mackelvie added. “In the UK the police aren’t armed routinely, the public aren’t armed routinely so a domestic disturbance doesn’t get to this stage.”