Photo: FacebookAs news of the fatal police shooting of Daniel Hambrick spread Thursday night, members of the Community Oversight Now coalition started sharing a sobering coincidence. They'd been out on the streets, collecting signatures for their effort to force a referendum on creating a community oversight board for Nashville police, when they heard about the shooting.

Gicola Lane was canvassing her old neighborhood in East Nashville, she tells the Scene. When news that a white police officer had shot a black man — a little more than a year after the Jocques Clemmons shooting that catalyzed the movement for community oversight — she "basically just froze."

"[I] had to go to my mom’s house and stay for a while because I was so frustrated," she says.

In a post on Facebook Thursday night, activist Andrew Krinks explained that he'd been collecting signatures outside a concert when someone in line told his companion about the shooting.

Hambrick, 25, was shot and killed by Officer Andrew Delke after running away from officers during an attempted traffic stop, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's preliminary version of events based on video obtained from a camera nearby. Metro police said Hambrick was carrying a gun when the shooting occurred. Delke, who is also 25-years-old and graduated from the Metro Nashville Police Department Academy in December 2016, was assigned to the Juvenile Crime Task Force, which authorities say had been searching for stolen vehicles in the North Nashville area.

Over the weekend following the shooting, support for the Community Oversight Now petition drive has surged. One of the coalition's leaders, Theeda Murphy, estimates that the group collected "maybe 1,500" signatures in the days following the shooting. But she says that's a conservative estimate.

"They’re coming in so rapidly now," Murphy says.

The group collected hundreds of signatures at church services Sunday morning and will continue canvasing until Tuesday evening. They plan to turn in the petition and signatures on Wednesday.

Community Oversight Now estimates they'll need 4,300 signatures in order to get the referendum on the November ballot. You can read their proposed legislation creating an oversight board here.