Three people were wounded in two separate incidents of gunfire Thursday afternoon in Birmingham.

A male and a female were found shot inside a car outside the BP gas station on Montevallo Road Southwest.

West Precinct Sgt. Matthew Self said the female victim was sitting inside the vehicle at the gas pumps while her boyfriend went inside the store. As he was leaving the store and headed back to his car, another man came up and opened fire.

The victim returned fire. It wasn't immediately clear whether the suspect was hit. The suspect fled the scene in his vehicle heading northbound on Montevallo Road.

With at least three dozen shots fired, the gunfire pelted the Toyota Camry that the wounded couple was in, and left shell casings scattered all over the roadway. Self said the female victim was shot in the back; the male in the leg. Both were taken to UAB Hospital with injuries that aren't believed to be life-threatening.

"She was in a lot of pain,'' Self said of the female victim.

Police were talking to witnesses and planning to view store surveillance camera footage. "There were a lot of people in the parking lot,'' Self said. Officers were also taking reports from at least two motorists who said their vehicles were hit by the gunfire.

No arrests have been made.

Just moments earlier, police responded to the 800 block of Center Street North, also on a report of a shooting. When they arrived on the scene, the victim was sitting on the front porch of his mother's apartment bleeding from the knee.

He told police he was at the corner store - Freshland Super Market - when the store owner fired a shot into the floor. The bullet ricocheted and struck him in the knee. He fled the scene to his mother's nearby apartment.

Police said the store owner said four young men came into the store, one of them possibly armed. Believing he was about to be robbed, he fired the warning shot into the floor. The teens fled the scene.

That incident remains under investigation. Paramedics checked out the victim, but did not take him to the hospital.