mama kumquat

A blog from someone who has little of importance to say

Friday, April 06, 2007

This might just be the raddest thing to happen to us since Charlie's birth.

This morning at about 6:20am, both my husband and i awoke to loud booming noises, sounding like gunshots, that were coming from very close to our house. It would not be completely out of the ordinary that we might hear gunshots, as we live in a previously ghetto-ized neighborhood and there are still shootings in our area, but not normally so close in proximity. We heard shouting. My husband leaned towards the open window and said, "it sounds like a cop yelling, 'get down, get down.''' Ahha. The house that we had been speculating was a drug house was under siege.
This said house is on the street perpendicular to ours but we share a fence in the back. Their house faces the main road and we are one house in on the cross street. Our house's property line actually is shared with the backs of three homes, with this druggie house being the one that sits most towards the back. Does that make sense? Anyway, for a few months, we had had some suspicions that there were some bad things going on there, what with a tweaky girl leaving their house and walking past ours, all the while checking over her shoulder as if someone was followng her. My husband saw another woman crawling out of the house onto the roof a few weeks back and then, just some loitering, public pissing on a fence near our house, cars left running on our street while someone went into the house and came out ten minutes later. You know. Drugs. I watch Law and Order. I know what the hell i'm talking about. Moreover, i have to admit that i have a remarkable ability to spot a tweaker from blocks away. There was some bad shit going down at this house. Fo' sho'.

We get out of bed and we look down our street. An EMT truck was blocking the road. We spy out the window that faces the busy street that the house is on. That road has been blocked by a serious amount of law enforcement vehicles. My husband says something like, "holy shit, let's stay away from the windows, get the baby, let's go back to our bedroom. They have assault weapons with them." We were in disbelieve that this was so close to us. I felt a cross of like, "wow, what a cool scene for us to check out and retell later" but also, "what if there's a shootout or the perp. runs or something?"
I went back to bed and started nursing the baby and brendan went downstairs to hit the bathroom. He comes back about 30 seconds later with another expletive like, "Holy shit, there are three guys in our back yard with assault rifles and a K-9 dog. I think there's another along the house that we can't see. " I look out the window and sure enough there are three guys in camoflage type uniforms with helmets and shields and big ole guns and a dog in our back yard along the fence. Holy Hell.
My husband had apparently waved at them to let them know we were awake and alive and not to shoot at us if they saw movement in our house. We didn't want any twitchy trigger fingers. We waited upstairs for a few more minutes. Is it a stand-off, we wondered. I felt safer with the armored guys in the back yard so now this started being kind of cool. Our neighbor's house was under siege. My husband went back downstairs and asked if there was a standoff. No, just a search warrant. That must have been quite the search warrant. They weren't messing around. Shut off three or more streets with i don't know how many units and essentially an armed militia in my backyard. This could not be the result of just a few neighbor complaints.

We heard some more yelling, some more booms. Apparently, they were throwing smoke grenades into the house. A few minutes longer and it was over. They started clearing out. I don't know what they found but when my husband left for work about an hour later, he said that he walked around the block to scope things out. Every window in the house had been broken with those smoke grenades. We can see their broken back windows from our back yard. I guess the front is more jacked up. Brendan said that there was a police lab parked in front of the house and there were still police officers bringing things out of the house. I checked the news and so far, nothing has been reported. I guess this stuff happens everyday. I suppose just because it was on a busier street doesn't mean it will warrant more attention. But damn, was that just wild this morning! Ah, what something like that can do for a boring old mama these days!

3 Comments:

Blogger Leslie Dillinger said...

Whoa! What an insane morning. I like that you're characterizing the whole thing as "rad." That's rad.

5:37 PM  
Blogger molly_g said...

whoa.

that's about all I can say about that.

although I relate to excitement factor. I've got these hippies with bikes across the street that have fights on occasion (you know, peace, love, domestic violence) that bring some drama to the otherwise quiet neighborhood about twice a year.

6:34 AM  
Blogger Shannon said...

i feel like i should say 'whoa!' too...

that is crazy meth-shit, yo...i had a homeless man shout at me 'hey olive-oyle!!' yesterday..but that's not nearly as exciting.

5:34 PM  

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