At 2am on Saturday morning, I awoke to a strobing light coming through our bathroom window. I walked to the window but couldn't see much due to the roof, so I stumbled into Benjamin's room for a better view.
We live off of a very busy street, so this is not a new phenomenon. In the seven years I have lived here, I've been awoken in the wee hours of the morning and have seen the following middle-of-the-night scenes: a police helicopter searchlight rolling around our complex, looking for the "bad guy"; countless traffic stops for speeding, racing or running a red light; cars colliding in the intersection; a mob of excited people watching a street fight play out in our parking lot; a teenager racing his muscle car that crashed into the fence opposite our complex; a driver losing control of their vehicle in icy conditions, that crashed through our fence and landed on our neighbor's parked car; another parked car engulfed in flames. We live in a busy place, you know.
Each time, those strobing lights from the ambulances, fire trucks and police cars wake me up... I'm a light sleeper.
Well, as I neared Benjamin's window, I kind of knew what to expect: a scene similar to one of those mentioned above. And it was... sort of. Instead of one police car, there were 3 State Patrol vehicles scattered in our parking lot. 3 is a record, so I just stood gawking through the blinds like the neighbor lady in "Bewitched".
Three police officers were standing in strategic locations, while another officer approached the little red car and spoke to the driver, who happened to be parked right in front of our driveway! Call it "train-wreck watching-itis" or "middle-of-the-night stupor", I was transfixed by yet another weird scene unfolding in our "front yard". And yeah, I was totally expecting craziness to ensue - yelling, fleeing, gun unholstering.
A minute later, a Sheriff's vehicle pulled up to the scene. The guy that emerged was clothed in blue and was toting something in his left hand. He walked up to the driver's side door, leaned in and exchanged words with red car's driver. Suddenly, a petite guy in skinny jeans and slicked hair emerged from the car.
Mr. Blue Police Man then breathalized Red Car Driver. And promptly slammed handcuffs on him and escorted him into the shiny Sheriff's vehicle.
And this, my friends, is yet another reason why we are selling our house... though it's not included in the flier.
6 comments:
Our residence down the street is just as bad even if the HOA slapped us all with an assessment to pay for the $45,000 gate so people could feel better about the area. That still didn't stop some guy driving through the closed gate it in the wee hours of the morning this past Easter weekend. Nice!
Not the best neighborhood...but exciting stories to tell. ;)
We lived in a place kind of like that in Renton for a while. A while being 4 months. Then we moved. I couldn't sleep at night because of the stuff going on, I was always afraid someone was going to try to break in or something crazy would happen.
Stupid drunk drivers. They really make me mad. We actually followed a drunk driver all the way from Renton on 405 up to Bellevue while on the phone with 911 trying to keep track of him (from a safe distance) until a cop car could get there. It was scary...he was going about 35 mph on the freeway, he ran into the barrier 3 times, finally got off on I-90 heading east and went through a red light, luckily nobody was hurt. When the cop finally found us, he actually had to use his car to push the guy off the road to pull over because he was to drunk to know what was going on. By the time he got up there to talk to the driver, he was passed out. We got to fill out a witness report. Hopefully that guy was jailed after that for a long time.
Just think of all the experience you have. Quite a few people in the ward were told to get their kids inside when the stabber who hid in the porta-potty was on the loose. You could have handled that without batting an eye.
yikes. good luck. i hope you got back to sleep ok ;-)
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