NEWPORT NEWS — A man was seriously injured in a shooting Wednesday night.

Police responded to the 500 block of Calla Court — off Chinkapin Trail in the city’s Denbigh section — following a report of a shooting at 9:32 p.m. Officers found a man in a parking lot with at least one gunshot wound.

He was taken to a hospital with injuries considered life-threatening.

Michele Canty, a resident of the apartment complex, said she was sitting on her couch when she heard “three or four shots” close by, followed by the sound of a car peeling away.

Canty, 49 — a former Daily Press crime reporter — said her “first instinct was to run outside and see what’s going on.”

A man was on the ground in the parking lot about 20 steps from Canty’s front door. She called 911 while she and about five other neighbors went over to the man to try to help him.

Neighbors initially believed the man — who Canty estimated was between 25 and 35 years old — was shot in the arm. But they realized he’d been shot at least twice, once on the left side of his face and once in the left abdomen.

“He was talking, but we couldn’t understand him,” Canty said, adding the man was struggling to breathe as neighbors tried to keep him conscious. At one point, a neighbor leaned in close while the man said something, and Canty asked what he said.

“Tell my daughter I love her,” the man said, Canty said the neighbor told her.

Police officers arrived relatively quickly, Canty said, and put the man onto his back.

“I saw him stop breathing, but then he took a deep breath and came back,” she said.

“Who shot you?” officers asked the man. “What’s your name?”

It wasn’t clear if the man responded. The ambulance came about “five or 10 minutes” after the shooting, Canty said, and medics were with him in the ambulance for about 10 minutes before taking him to the hospital.

Canty said she didn’t know the man and didn’t recognize him from the neighborhood.

Calla Court is a cul de sac in the Woodscape Apartments, off Jefferson Avenue a few miles south of Fort Eustis. Canty said crime is uncommon in the apartment complex, and “we’ve never had a shooting” in her 10 years there.

Residents there tend to get up early, she said, and were likely settling in for the night at the time of the shooting.

“This is a blue-collar, working-class neighborhood,” Canty said, saying the complex is filled with teachers, police officers, VDOT employees, retired couples and families with young children who often play outside. “We manage our business. We take care of our neighbors.”

Canty’s 13-year-old daughter was in her bedroom at the time of the shooting, and was shocked to learn in the morning that a man had been shot just outside.

When Canty was taking the girl to school in the morning, apartment maintenance workers were outside cleaning blood from the pavement “while elementary school kids were across the street playing tag as they waited for the bus.”

The police investigation is ongoing.

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com

Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com