REALLY??

Okay, I can't believe I'm writing this, but a man was shot and killed on our driveway early this morning!!!! Seriously. Lead story on all the news stations. All I can say is God had his hands on us last night.

Here is the story as I know it:

After my large New Year's Eve celebration, I needed some help with Robert Alan on good ole' January 1, so David, Robert Alan, and I made the trip out to my sister's house (only about 20 minutes away) and hung out there all day. The guys watched football while Brittney and I watched Robert Alan and tried to catch cat naps. So, when it came time to decide what to eat, we debated going into town and eating Poppa Rollo's. I wanted to go home and eat at the house and have Britt and Clay come over to our house so that RA could sleep in his bed and try to get him back on schedule. David thought we should just stay at their house and watch movies, let RA sleep over there, and we could all go home in the morning. Being tired and too weak to argue, I agreed. I didn't really feel like loading up the car anyways. Plus, having Brittney to help out all night sounded really nice to me. So, the guys went into town to get the pizza. Brittney, David, and I watched a movie and then we went to bed. Probably around 11:00 p.m. Well, RA woke up at 3:00 and I was nursing him when a 972-number called my cell phone. "Who is that?" David asked. "I have no idea. Probably a wrong number." We ignored the call. Then it called again. I answered. It was our security system provider telling me that the police were at our house and were requesting that a responder come to the house. They wanted to know how long it would take for us to get there and what we'd be driving so that the police would recognize us. OMG. I don't think I can accurately describe how that phone conversation made me feel. I started shivering, my heart was racing, thoughts went through my mind 1,000 at a time.

So, I woke Brittney up, quickly told her that the police were at our house for some reason unknown to us, and that I needed her to watch RA while we went into town to see what was up. We'd be back as soon as possible.

The entire drive there, David and I were trying to come up with each scenario we could think of. We thought maybe the house had caught fire (horrible), or maybe the police had caught someone breaking into our house (also horrible), or maybe someone had broken into David's truck (bad, but not horrible). As we were driving up to the house, you could see the cop car lights from 1/2 mile away. There were at least 12 cop cars. The intersection to our house had yellow crime scene tape all around it. The cop walked up and told us we had to turn around. Upon explaining that we owned the house on the corner and were told to come home, he told us to turn around and go in the other way and he'd meet us at the front. "What happened?" David asked. Cop: "There was a man burglarizing cars and he ran from us so we shot him. At least one bullet went into your house." At this point, I notice that there is a wrecked blazer on the grass about 1 foot from our fence. Holy cow.

So, we go into the house and into the garage where they knew one bullet had gone. Seriously. The bullet had gone through the garage door and into the wall. It stopped in the wall before it got into our house, though. On the other side of the wall is our laundry room. Had the bullet been 6 feet further over, it would have gone through our breakfast room window and who knows what wall it would have landed in. What if we had been home?! God was watching over us. Our dog wasn't even at the house--she had stayed at Gigi and PopPop's for the day and night.

Anyways, the crime scene lady took pictures, they showed us 7 other places in our fence where bullets had gone in, and then we left the house after the officer gave us his card with the case number on it with the promise that Risk Management would be calling us. Huh?

We went back to Britt's house and tried to sleep. I mean, after everything we had imagined, a bullet hole in our garage and wall and 7 in our fence with a car 6 inches from going through the fence is nothing, right? Little did we know the whole story....

We got back to our house this morning at 11:00 a.m. thinking everything would be gone. It wasn't! They still had the intersection blocked off and were still there taking pictures. The car was even still there! So here is the rest of the story:

The guy was breaking into cars in a neighborhood pretty far away from ours. He fled from cops and went through at least 1 barricade. Then, while trying to turn at a high speed on our street, he lost control of his car and hit the traffic light on our corner. He got out of his car and started shooting at the cops while running towards our fence. They shot back and he fell to his face. They ordered him to drop his gun, and he rolled over on his back, shouted "F*** YOU!" and kept shooting at them (he shot out the cop's car window). They shot him some more, and he was stopped right where our fence and electric gate meet. He died in the ambulence on the way to the hospital. I still can't believe it happened. So many bullets could have gone through our house, or someone else's. It's weird to say, but if it had to happen, I'm almost glad it happened at our house because we weren't there. What if it had happened at someone else's house and they had been home? I'm glad the cops are okay. I'm also glad I didn't know last night that the guy had died right by our gate.

Needless to say, pulling into my driveway tonight after going to get dinner was a little weird.