Saturday, January 17, 2009

Rude Awakening


It was 1 Am and I was sound asleep when my older son burst into my room and shouted,"Dad, somethings going on outside!" I quickly pulled on some shorts,  grabbed my handgun off of the side table and ran over to my kitchen window which looks out into the backyard. A police helicopter was flying tight circles directly over my house shining an extremely bright white searchlight around my backyard. My twelve year old son has been hard at work setting up a series of forts and bunkers in the backyard and I think the pilots were having some trouble searching those structures. I didn't see any movement so I ran to the living room window. I could hear police radios but I couldn't see anybody. The searchlight was now concentrated on the far side of my driveway. A patrol car drove up at high speed and came to an abrupt stop in front of my yard. The officer jumped out and ran to our driveway. Another officer appeared with two prisoners in tow. The prisoners were walked across my yard headed to a side street out of my view. I had avoided stepping out of my house because I didn't want to be mistaken for one of the bad guys, but after seeing two people in custody I opened my front door and walked onto my porch. An officer approached me and told me that there was still a suspect on the loose. He didn't have time to talk.  I saw several more patrol cars and an ambulance rush across my street to another location to the east of our house. This lasted for another twenty to thirty minutes before the officers departed. It was hard for me to go back to sleep. This morning I searched my property looking for discarded weapons or drugs before I let my kids out of the house. I still don't know what happened but I'm waiting for the evening news.  I'm grateful that the police responded as quickly as they did and that nobody tried to break into my house.

5 comments:

  1. Living in Fort Worth for about 15 years now, I have to say that the FWPD is a top-notch police force. They are very proactive in apprehending the bad guys, and leave the good guys alone.

    Still.... scary to think the bad guys were all around your house!

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  2. the most amazing thing about the story for someone living in a country with the american's 'gun culture' (for want of a better term) is when you say that you grabbed your handgun!
    that seems so alien to us and i'm sure is quite normal for you.

    glad that you and your's are ok anyway.

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  3. Doohickie-I've been pleased with the response from FWPD when I've had to call them in the past.

    placid casual-Yep, this is Texas. Most people in this state have grown up around firearms and own them for home protection, hunting etc.

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  4. Wow. I'm with placid casual. You grabbed a hand gun off your side table when your boy said something was going on outside! Completely foreign to me over in Australia.

    On a completely unrelated note - my brother bought one of your t-shirts for me and I love it. It's getting plenty of comments when I wear it too!

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  5. Hey Jonathan I'm glad you like the shirt. I've been neglecting my printing since Christmas but I'm working on some new design ideas.

    As for guns, attitudes have changed quite a bit. When I was in high school in the 80's it wasn't uncommon to see students drive their pickup trucks into the school parking lot with rifles in their widow mounted gun racks. Nobody thought anything about it and there was no such thing as a "school shooting".

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