True Story Tuesday - One Rainy Monday

This is my first ever True Story Tuesday post. I hope I linked everything right, but even if I didn’t, this story is truly worth telling. I was inspired to join in by wife.mom.nurse. Check out her TST.

For some reason, I decided to take a mental health day and stay home from work on a rainy Monday. I was working full time and loving the independence of living alone. Well, some what alone. I lived in a two family house, one of a set of three houses so close together you can hear the leaves rustling as my neighbor made it home at the wee hours of the morning. I also, so I thought, lived in a very quiet town. In fact, it’s the town I grew up in where no one ever locked their doors and let their kids go out and play till the street lights came on.

My neighbors were, um, a bit sketchy to say the least. The middle house had a man in his twenties that only used this apartment during the week and went to his house on the weekends. The house on the end had a bunch of young men living there and there was so much turn over.

Well, back to that rainy morning. It had started to pour – I mean buckets and I was looking out side on my front porch when I look to my right and see one of those young men two houses down standing completely naked. Oh, and yeah, he’s BLEEDING from his side.

Oh My God!

Just as I saw the young man come out of his house a patrol car was pulling up and the town’s sergeant got out and was going in to help.

Good, I didn’t have to call the police. But my heart is racing. What just happened? Am I in danger?

I lock my door. I lock my back door. I check all the windows.

I call my then boyfriend, who’s a police officer, and says to stay in side. Well no shit Sherlock.

I call my stepfather, who happens to be my landlord. He knows who the victim is and he calls the police to get the scoop. My stepfather also happens to be the town’s attorney so he’d have no problem getting the details. Yeah… it’s a small town.

More cop cars show up lights and sirens blazing. It’s still pouring. The poor neighbor gets taken away in an ambulance. Then the cops are high tailing it around town to find the suspects.

After what seems like HOURS, but which was probably less than an hour, my stepfather calls me back and fills me in.

The neighbor, Danny, was robbed, stabbed and locked in a closet by two intruders. The robbers left to use his ATM card. Danny kicked his way through the drywall to get out. I’m not sure why he was naked… was he surprised in the shower? Or was he sleeping in the buff? I never knew anyone who slept naked. That’s just too much information to know about a neighbor. Heck, I didn’t need the mental visual – I saw the real thing. But it was the blood that really got my attention.

My little town is small and upper middle class. It’s certainly a fact that in some parts of town we do not have many minorities. Well, if it just so happens the police used a bit of racial profiling to catch the suspects, then so be it. The cops saw two African American young men walking down a side street and picked them up. Turns out, their get away car wouldn’t start so they were trying to hoof it out of town.

A few weeks later I come to find out one of Danny’s roommates was hanging with a pretty rough crowd and they came to rob him knowing that he had money.

Just goes to show you that even if you live in a small town you really shouldn’t let your guard down. Lock your doors and keep an eye on your neighbors.