Lee County deputies investigating body found in street in Pine Manor

Lee County deputies are investigating a body found in the street in Pine Manor on Wednesday morning.

According to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, a dead man with a gunshot wound was found at Cypress Drive and 5th Avenue. The scene is contained and deputies believe there is no threat to the public. Detectives will be at the scene throughout the day.

WINK News spoke to neighbors who say this has them shaken up, but not surprised; they don’t feel safe in this neighborhood. While no one WINK spoke to heard a gunshot, they did hear some type of commotion early in the morning.

“We heard it all the way down on Eighth Street. We thought, you know, there’s a bunch of teenagers, just acting out; that’s really what it sounded like,” one neighbor said. “A lot of the crime has gone down, but then you see stuff like this, and it’s like, ‘Here we go again, just like a cycle.’ But it’s really nerve-wracking and anxious, though, waking up to stuff like this. Definitely, not a safe place to live.”

Neighbors are frustrated that crime scene tape and deputies investigating continue to be commonplace in Pine Manor.

One woman, who asked not to be identified, said she lives in fear.

“As a female, like, I can’t even like walk around. Like, I have to have like, a male with me at all times. At night, you have to like, watch your back constantly. And I have a son to like, and I hate like, you know, it’s like scary having to raise him out here,” she said.

John Kimbrell has lives in Pine Manor for 43 years.

“When I first moved in, it was a working-class neighborhood,” Kimbrell said. “Everybody was working class of course. They still are. It comes and goes. It’s you know, for a while it’d be nice and sometimes it’ll just get pretty crazy around here and then the sheriff come in and they will clean it up and it’ll be nice for a while and then it starts getting rough again.”

Kimbrell stays because the house is paid for, he said.

“It’s just the neighbors in the neighborhood,” he said. “Some of them are nice, some of them not so nice.”