The girls had just gone down for naps yesterday when Red started barking like crazy out in the living room. She woke Molly who started screaming hysterically. I ran out to chew Red out and comfort Molly before either of them could wake Livy. Red was barking out the front windows with her paws up on the window sill. It was trash day and I assumed she was barking at the neighbor putting his trash can away. I walked over to explain how harmless it all was and saw a police officer with his gun drawn, pointed at my backyard. I could have reached out and touched him if it weren’t for the window. It took a few seconds for it to register . . . a man outside the window . . . in a police uniform . . . with a gun pointed . . . RUN!!!!!! I scooped up Molly and ran to the back of the house with my mind racing – what the heck is going on?? I grabbed the phone and tried to call JR, but there was no answer.
For the next two hours, I was holed up in the house, with the girls taking naps, peeking out the windows every so often to see what was going on. There were multiple police vehicles (looked like a couple motorcycles, a couple cruisers, and a K-9 unit) all up and down the street and many more officers on foot. At each end of the block, an officer was stationed with an AR-15 machine gun and the ones roaming the street had their pistols out. A couple different times, they approached our house/yard/fence and talked amongst themselves. It was terrifying and fascinating and confusing and alarming all at the same time! After talking with neighbors and watching the news I was able to piece together the story. Three young men staged a takeover style robbery of the Wachovia bank about half a mile from our house armed with shotguns. They escaped the bank and were going to switch cars nearby, but they crashed their first car in a nearby field, which burst into flames. The police were hot on their trail and they weren’t able to make it to the other car. One was injured and arrested at the scene of the car crash. Another one fled on foot and was pursued by police. He started hopping through backyards and ended up hiding in one of our neighbor’s backyards under a patio table just four houses up the block. The police were entering each backyard on our street looking for him. When they got close to finding him, they let the dog out and according to my neighbor Bill, “when the dog got him, he was a real punk and was screaming that he was bleeding. He looked like he was only about 19.” Bill and his wife, Rose, actually stood out on their front porch and watched the whole thing while the rest of us were in lock-down in our houses! At trick or treat time last night, the third suspect was still at-large and according to the news, “considered armed and dangerous.” We shut off our porch light and decided not to go out. This afternoon, the news website said they caught the third man and had arrested a fourth after he was originally thought to be a witness but ended up being the get away driver of their backup car.
As it turned out, JR was in important meetings all afternoon and didn’t get my half a dozen frantic messages until after work. When he walked in the door I said, “Did you get my messages?” “Yeah,” he said, “What was I going to do?” Well, I don’t know what I thought he could do, but it was one of those times that you want to talk to your husband, I know that. I had considered my self-defense options – dog mace and a .22 rifle. The dog mace was on the stroller in the back of the pick-up in the driveway so I wasn’t going out for that. The rifle was locked in a case under our bed – I didn’t know where the key to the case was, where the ammunition was, or how to load it if I was able to get past the first two obstacles. I figured my best bet was to pray for a peaceful resolution or JR to come home and save us. In the end, we were probably never in grave danger and it’s hard to say if he was ever even in our yard or not. Thankfully, he did not enter anyone’s home and no shots were fired during the arrest. Thankfully, we are all safe and sound, back to life as usual.
You can read the local news story which has security camera pictures of the take over here. And you can watch the video below to see what the neighborhood looked like – check out the video in the upper right of this article.
Well, I’ll be honest, Molly has been smiling for over a month now (actually, since she was about six weeks old)! I know, I know, how could we let so much time go by without showing you? The truth is that she has been hard to catch on camera and also that we’ve been slow to update the photo album – but you’ll forgive us since we just put up dozens more photos, right? I’m sure you’ll agree that Molly is even more beatiful with a drooly, gummy grin!