‘Who was shooting?’

All she could focus on as she anxiously crouched on all fours in her living room was the man next door pacing in the backyard.

Peering ahead past the kitchen and through the windowed doors into her backyard beyond her trees, her eyes fixed on the beanie-covered head that was barely taller than her back fence.

“Was that who was shooting at my house?” she thought.

Just before 5 p.m. Sunday, Costa Mesa police started getting calls about gunshots somewhere on Church Street. They were coming from somewhere between Walnut and East 20th streets, witnesses said.

Residents said within minutes a police helicopter hovered in the area, police swarmed the neighborhood just off the 55 Freeway and ordered everyone to stay indoors.

One of those first calls came from Donna, whose home on Fullerton Street backs the Church Street homes. Donna, who declined to give her last name for safety concerns, was cooking when she first heard the gunshots.

“When you first hear it, you don’t think gunshots,” she said. “It sounded like firecrackers. Then you hear a ‘thwack!’ and I thought, ‘OK, are they throwing them at my house?’”

According to police, those pops were from a shotgun and handgun. Various bullet holes in Donna’s backyard, one slicing into her lawn, another shredding tree branches and tearing off a piece of the trunk, and several into her walls and one shattering a bedroom window illustrate the haphazard way police said the man was shooting.

Authorities arrested Ezra Thomas Fee, 33, who lived in the house behind Donna’s, on suspicion of firing a gun inside a home.

“Stuff hit the house like three, four times maybe ... at first you’re getting kind of annoyed. I’m going to go talk to my neighbors,” Donna remembered thinking.

But when a homeowner ran to her and said it was a gun, she immediately called 911, she said. “You think, ‘Why is my house being shot?’ It’s a weird feeling,” Donna said.

She said dispatchers told everyone to stay on the ground. From there, she watched that head pace back and forth through the backyard, not knowing if more bullets were headed her way. She said her house was hit intermittently for about 15 minutes until the man was arrested.

Police eventually found where the shots were coming from, thanks in part to Fee’s father arriving and telling authorities his son was drunk and had fired his gun, police said. Michelle A. Scott, a Church Street resident, said about 20 officers including a K-9 unit barricaded her street, took strategic positions armed with rifles and ordered Fee outside. Many neighbors said they were unaware anything was going on until Fee was ordered outside. A SWAT team negotiator talked to Fee, who eventually surrendered without incident. Police said he had 11 guns inside his home.

He is scheduled to be arraigned today in the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach. Police said he’s being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

Police went door to door to check for injuries or damaged property from stray bullets.

“Police were wonderful; they were incredibly thorough,” Donna said.

Reporter JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at [email protected].