Swat Teams and Snipers

Apparently, the only pictures I had of my exciting Tuesday have been expunged from my camera. By what means, I have no clue. Aside from that, I must set a scene for you.

9:22a.m. Tuesday, August 29, 2006.

Police sirens were sounding very near our home. My husband and I had taken our time rising as we did not feel the need to rush on that morning. Curiousity got the better of us and we peaked out the window to find the cop cars surrounding the house across the street from ours. The police started streaming out of their cars. Some of them were running towards the back of the house with shotguns and rifles. The rest of them had handguns.

As my eyes got larger my husband and I (and our two dogs) were sitting on the floor in front of the open window watching the event unfold right in front of us. More cops showed up positioning themselves around the house. Some of them were in front of our house, using my husband's truck as a means of safeguard. Is that covered by insurance? An SUV was in the middle of the blockade and a U.S. marshall stepped out with a police shield strapped to one arm, held up in front of him. They evacuated the family inside. Two kids, two adults.

The woman who came out was in total shock and could only exclaim, "I had no idea! I didn't know this! I had no idea!" As we viewed this from out window, it occurred to me that this was a photo opportunity, no matter how in appropriate. Thankfully, my camera battery was dead, so my better judgement kicked in and I backed away from the window. I encouraged my husband to move away also, but he kept a boyish grin on his face and remained where he was. He was in perfect range for gunfire, in case any should incur. I started panicking.

I made the dogs go on the porch at the back of the house to protect them from stray bullets. After a few minutes of me pacing and my husband watching and saying things like, "That's a sniper gun. That's a rilfe. That's a blah, blah, blah,blah,blah." The dogs began barking. I raced to quiet them and there was a cop in our driveway telling us to evacuate. He said, "You need to evacuate. There's a murderer across the street."

We grabbed the dogs, I grabbed the cell phones and a wallet and we were out in a flash. As we squeezed behind fences with our new neighbors to the other end of the street, the surrealty of the situation struck me. I do not handle intense situations with an ere of calmness. But, thankfully, someone was watching over us beause our new neighbor's boyfriend is one of the funniest people I've ever met.

As we watched tv crews, more police, snipers, a swat team with an armored truck and another U.S.Marshall show up all we could do was speculate. A crowd had gathered on another portion of the street where a better view was to be had. We waited with them for two hours.

The suspected murderer came out with his hands up. It did not end in gunfire. We were blessed.

Day 3 in Portland was complete.
This is the view of 112 Dartmouth St. This is what we could see, except it wasn't raining. Sorry about the blurry image, but I took this picture through a screened window. Jake's gray truck is parked where it was on Tuesday. There was one policeman positioned at behind the tree/Jake's car. There was another one across the street behind that tree and one on the porch of the red house with a rifle. That little grassy area between the fence and the garage is where one sniper positioned himself. Pretty freaky. This was our escape route. We had to squeeze between the fence and the garage and then went behind more garages to the street perpendicular to ours. We waited on that side for awhile, until we realized there was a better view and more people further down Dartmouth.