Violent nights, shootings, car fires: What is happening on Mary Street?

Bullets fired into two separate homes, with people inside. A car, burning in the street. Sirens blaring in the dead of night. This is what life has been like this month on downtown Hamilton's Mary Street.

"It seems like every two weeks something is happening," said Joe Gallo, shaking his head outside his mother-in-law's house on Mary, just north of Cannon.

It seems that way because it is. What looks like a quiet lower city street in the light of day has endured three different violent episodes at night in the lastfive weeks.

• Gunshots fired into downtown home with people inside
• Fire destroys car on Mary Street N., same block as recent shootings

On Boxing Day, someone fired bullets into 166 Mary Street, before jumping into a car and taking off. People were home, but no one was hurt.

Then on Jan. 11, someone shot up the house next door, at 164. Again,no one was hurt.

Early yesterday morning, firefighters arrived on the street to see a car going up in flames right outside those same two homes.

"That car was on fire right here," Gallo said, steps fromhis mother-in-law's home, and not far from the shattered glass and extinguisher foam used to douse the flames, collecting near the curb.

"And that used to be my bedroom," Gallo said, gesturing to an upstairs window at 166 the exact same window that had a bullet hole in it after the shooting on Boxing Day. His family owned the property for years, before selling it about nine years ago.

Police say they're investigating the possibility that the two shooting incidents are connected. "It's too early in the investigations to confirm if evidence in the arson case is related to the shootings," Police Const. Steve Welton said.

Then there's the 15-year-old who was shot on Cannon Street East Wednesday night, less than a ten-minute drive away from where the burning car was found, hours later. Police haven't said whether they believe that is connected to the burning car, or the shootings on Mary.

But Sam Scozzari says he feels the two shootings on Mary Street and the torched car have to be connected.

"It seems like a targeted situation," he saidfrom his mother's home, just down the street from where the car had burned. "It seems like a personal thing."

When a reporter knocked at those doors Thursday afternoon, no one answered.

Scozzari's parents have owned their house on Mary Street since 1965, and he grew up there. "It's always been family oriented," he said. "It has always been quiet."

Before these recent violent incidents, he says, the last real crime he'd heard of on the block was people busting out car windows to steal 8-track players.

Mary Street is a microcosm for the shift that Hamilton is seeing, in a lot of ways. The housing stock is largely older, with brick houses lining the street, row by row.

Some of them need work, and have seen better days. Other homes are well kept, and been in the same families for years. Still others have new owners, with younger people moving in and fixing them up, lured in by the promise shown in downtown Hamilton, and the nearby GO station.

It's the kind of street where Scozzari can stand on his mother's porch, and point to just about any house and recite who lives there, or who used to live there. A cousin, across the street. An uncle in a red house, just a few feet away. "Dave," who lives down the street.

It was a stop for waves of immigrants coming to Canada, he says first Italians, then Portuguese. Before his mother recently moved into a retirement home, people would come to shovel her walkway, and mow her grass, no questions asked.

"It's family here," Scozzari said.

That's another reason that he's convinced that the violence is confined to oneissue, or beef that someone has.

"If they were shooting up the street, it would be different. But there's something specific going on, up there."

adam.carter@cbc.ca