Scraps of my Life

I swear, this shit always happens to me!

I left early to pick David up from school because I needed to stop at Michael’s to get some sewing supplies.  I’m way behind on getting cub scout patches on uniforms.  I needed some stronger/thicker needles because I’d already bent the heck out of the couple I had.  I ended up arriving at the school earlier than I planned, but that was OK.

As I sat there listening to NPR ("Fresh Air" with Terry Gross – Fascinating interviews regarding the MPAA and it’s movie ratings system), I noticed that there was suddenly a tremendous amount of police activity.  I continued to watch all the different police vehicles racing around the schools when someone stopped one of the vehicles and talked to the officer…then the officer took off.  So I asked the guy what was going on.  He said there was a couple of suspicious guys in the neighborhood.

A short time later I saw one guy (mid-20s, faded blue jeans, grey cap on backwards, a white t-shirt under a darker t-shirt) hop down off of a wall around one housing complex, run across the street and hop over the wall into another housing complex.  I pointed to the cops coming up the street to indicate where the guy went over and one cop followed over the wall and another drove around.  Meanwhile a police helicopter joins the fray.  A while later a bunch of officers are stationed at every intersection and they insist we stay in our cars and they lock down the school.

The officer closest to me came over and talked to me, asked me to describe the guy I saw jump the wall, and then confirmed he was in custody.  Then he informed me that these guys were suspected in a string of robberies that happened over the weekend (16 robberies to be exact), and they were doing it this afternoon.  Apparently they were knocking on doors and when no one answered they hopped the fence and kicked in a door or window.  Only today they hit the street of an off-duty police sargent.  It was the sargent who called in the cavalry. 

They found the suspects vehicle and discovered hand guns so that’s when the school was locked down…just about 20 minutes before they were due to get out of school.  They were still looking for one suspect…they still had the helicopter circling and called in the dogs.  They didn’t apprehend the second guy until almost 4:00pm…school normally lets out at 3:21 and all the racing around started shortly after 2pm. 

I’ve heard of this kind of stuff happening before and have even been at the school when they had a lock down drill…but this was something else.  It was exciting while it was happening…but in retrospect it was also scary considering all that "could" have happened.  I was just so glad that the school got locked down and I could relax that our kids would be safe.

Now that I’ve experienced this once, I think the odds are high that it would ever happen again and I am just fine with that…know what I mean?

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