A man rides a bicycle Wednesday evening down Rideout Avenue in Lewiston, in the area where a teenager was shot and killed last week. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

When the woman peered out into the darkness beyond her apartment door that late Sunday night, she believed what she saw lying in the road was an abandoned backpack. 

Just a basic backpack lying on a patch of Rideout Avenue where a silver car had been parked moments before. 

There was no movement out there now, the woman tells me, and the night was suddenly quiet. 

And then, she says, “I hear the worst screams I’ve ever heard.” 

As it happens, those screams of rage and anguish came from the sisters of Sahal Muridi, a 17-year-old boy who had been gunned down minutes earlier and left for dead. 

For the woman who had witnessed the events leading up to all of this, the facts began to clarify themselves inside her head.

That wasn’t a backpack she had spied at the side of the road, it was the body of a slain teenager. 

The scuffle she had seen inside the passenger side of that silver car wasn’t just kids messing around, it was a young man fighting for his life. 

Those “three or four pops” she had heard were not fireworks, after all, but gunshots.  

And when all of those grim facts lined up, the woman realized with a feeling like sickness that what she had seen with her own eyes was a homicide. 

“What I had witnessed was this kid being shot and then shoved out the passenger side,” she said. “Left dead in the road. I called 911 and broke down. He was gone and there was nothing any of us could do.” 

The woman tells her story only reluctantly and she is adamant — understandably — that her name not be used. Although police are said to be interviewing witnesses and persons of interest in the killing of Sahal Muridi, no arrests have been made. 

The woman fears the knowledge that she has. She fears the killers might come back. 

On the night of July 14, she had just put her youngest children to bed and then it was time to start the nightly routine of taking her dogs outside to do their business. 

She was standing next to a tree with her biggest pup, she says, when a silver car pulled up to the side of the road not far from where she stood in shadows. 

The car stereo was pumping loud music. Thinking it was just some neighbor kids, the woman walked her dog to the dumpsters and then went back into her apartment. 

“Within a minute or two, I heard what I thought were fireworks,” she says. “Being annoyed, thinking they were doing it to piss me off or get my dogs going like they did on the Fourth of July, I opened my door to tell them to take it somewhere else — and instead I saw something I wish I didn’t.” 

Inside the silver car, she says, the dome light was on “and I could see a lot of chaos in the passenger side. It was a little while later when I realized that what I witnessed was the victim fighting for his life.”

As she watched this scuffle she heard a few more loud pops. Moments later, the driver of the car sped off “very fast,” the shaken lady recalls. 

That’s when she peered out and saw what she had mistaken for a backpack lying in the road.  

That’s when she heard those terrible screams and began to understand what she had seen.

Now, more than a week later, she finds herself a mess of roiling emotions. 

One of those emotions is guilt: if she had yelled at the occupants of the car when she first heard what she thought were fireworks, might they have fled in a panic rather than firing more rounds at the victim? 

“But I also know I could have been shot if I’d done that,” she says. 

Mostly, there is fear. With no arrests made in the killing of Sahal Muridi, and with additional gunshots reported at the apartment complex just days after the killing, the woman finds herself constantly afraid. 

“I haven’t been getting much sleep since this has happened and I believe it’s catching up to me,” she says. “I’ve never been more fearful of my surroundings as I am now.” 

The woman, as it happens, grew up in Southern California. Yet it wasn’t until she moved to Lewiston that she experienced gunfire right outside her door. 

“My kids are a mess,” she says, “scared of any loud pop. I haven’t allowed them outside out of fear.”  

Maine State Police have been investigating the slaying of Sahal Muridi. In a statement, investigators said the driver of that silver car, a Mercedes, has been cooperating with police. There were also reports of a black Dodge Challenger in the area of the killing, although police have not said if the occupants of that car were involved in the killing. 

For the people of Lewiston, reports of death and gunfire that have vexed this summer, are all too familiar. A year ago, in July of 2023, two men, Keyt Hussein and Mohamed Sheikh, were gunned down and killed during a daylight shootout on Knox Street. 

Police said Hussein, sitting in a parked car, was shot by Sheikh, who was then shot and killed by a third man, Mohamed Liban. 

No one was ever charged in that deadly affair. 

For a city that already has the jitters from a mass shooting in October, recent gunfire has left the public demanding action from police. Committees formed to discuss possible solutions to the rampant gunfire have had little effect. 

The witness from Rideout Avenue has the jitters, too. She fears for the safety of her family and the events of the night of July 14 are never far from her thoughts. 

The backpack that wasn’t. The fireworks that proved to be gunfire.  

The sight of that teenager fighting for his life while the witness stood in the dark misunderstanding the scene unfolding before her. 

“I haven’t been the same since,” she says. “The flashbacks of that night take a toll on me emotionally, that’s for sure.”