we got home saturday night around 8:00 after going to a waterpark with our son and some friends. after bath time, my wife put keaton to bed around 8:30 or so while i was downstairs with huckleberry, our dog. huckleberry was so glad that we were finally home that he ate an entire bowl of food and proceeded to throw it up in a large pile on the carpet. sweet.
so i cleaned all that loveliness up by putting it in a plastic bag and carrying it around the side of the house to the trash. no sooner had i come back inside and started watching the christina aguilara saturday night live rerun on E! when i heard two loud noises; POP POP.
i got up and yelled upstairs to my wife to see if she heard it or if maybe she had caused it. my first thought was a gun shot, but since that was highly unlikely, i thought maybe my wife had just dropped something upstairs. anyway, by this point, she was already in the shower and didn't answer me, so i went and sat back down.
about ten minutes later, my wife came downstairs and i was telling her about huckleberry getting sick when we heard a very loud helicopter. she glanced toward the front of our house and saw the flashing lights of various frisco city employee's cars; fire trucks, ambulances, and cop cars. just after that, a careflight helicopter landed in our formerly quiet cul-de-sac.
across the street, police tape was out in full force, letting us know that it wasn't just an elderly neighbor having chest pains.
being the nosy person i am, i walked outside and started down the driveway when a flashlight beam was shone on my face and i was told, rather forcefully, to "GET BACK IN YOUR HOUSE! GO, GO, GO!". well, i did just that, although i was a little indignant about the tone.
i watched from our 2nd story front window for the next hour or two (hard to keep track of time during all that) and saw the following, more or less chronologically:
- police, with shotguns & handguns drawn, racing down the street
- the shooting victim wheeled from the ambulance (he was already in the ambulance by the time we started watching) to the careflight and flown away.
- police taking about a thousand pictures of the street, doorway, front yard and everywhere else.
close to 11:00, i went back outside and eventually a policeman came over to ask me what i saw and heard. because i'm a tard and didn't look outside, i saw nothing, but i told him i heard two shots around 9:15. he took my name and number and told me to go back inside. he wouldn't tell me anything about the crime. likewise when i called the police to ask what had happened, all they would say was that the suspect was still in the area and that we should stay inside.
it was really freaky seeing all that stuff go down and i got a little scared when i realized that i had been outside probably two minutes before it happened. at this point, we had no idea if it was a carjacking, a home invasion, or some driveway robbery. all i knew is that it had to have happened outside since i heard the shots and that someone was injured badly enough to be taken off in a helicopter rather than an ambulance.
eventually they all left and i had 6-8 drinks to calm down before turning in close to 2 am. the next morning, the story made the news and it turned out to be some punkass 15 year-old kid shooting his "acquaintance", a 14 year-old. the shooter lived a couple of streets over and was identified by the victim, who had crawled back inside and called 911.
there are always kids outside my house playing catch or playing basketball, so i'm sure i've seen him before.
all things considered, it's easier to take knowing that it was a teenager shooting another teenager, as opposed to some random, unsolved carjacking. i know that doesn't sound very nice, but when you live in the hood, as we apparently now do, you take what you can get.
Here is the story. the kid is expected to make it and as of this morning, the shooter has not confessed. hopefully he'll get tried as an adult. i'm especially mad at him for ruining my saturday night.
all the news vans showed up sunday afternoon to film their pieces and channel 8 went live with the 5:00 news. they were in front of my house while they filmed the segment with the police spokesperson, so i stood in my driveway and listened. one of the media people asked if i wanted to be filmed, to provide a "neighborhood reaction". i politely declined, as i was sweaty (it was 100 degrees) and needed a shave. can't go on tv looking like that.
hope your weekends were better.
it's just like you to decline being interviewed just because you're not pretty enough.
scary, though. i hate "what if's" and close calls. porr kid. hope he'll be alright. take the family a cake or something.
Posted by: Angela | July 31, 2006 at 11:48 AM
You know, I wondered how close this was to you guys when I saw it on the news. It looked very close when they showed the little map with street names, but I could not remember the names of the streets around your house.
I'm glad everyone was okay, and I hope there aren't any retaliatory attacks. I think Too $hort said it best...I leave you with his words:
Even though they put us down and call us animals
We make real big banks and buy brand new clothes
Drive fancy cars, make love to stars
Never really saying just who we are
We use alias names like too $hort
Sell you stuff you might kill for
Young kids grow up and that’s all they know
Didn’t teach him in school now he’s slangin dope
Only thing he knows is how to survive
But will he kill another brother before he dies?
In the ghetto, you keep one eye open
All day long, just hoping and hoping
You can pay your bills and not drink too much
Then the problems of life you’ll be throwing up
Like me, but you don’t see
Ten years from now, where will you be?
Posted by: Jeff | July 31, 2006 at 01:34 PM