I’ve had a few people
ask me about the details of what my coworkers and I experience last week at the
police standoff at Walmart. Even as I
type this it sounds like the subject of a
young adult novel. And not a good
one.
Anyway, it was shortly after 11:00 am on Friday,
4/24/15. I was sitting at my desk in the
tiny office in John Deere Landscapes supply, and so was my boss. Our desks face each other, because that is
the only configuration that will fit two desks in this office. We heard a poppoppop. I looked up at him and said, “gunshots?” He gave me a worried look and nodded his
head. He hates guns. I, like a moron, popped my head up to look
out the window. We have a yard debris
recycling place next door, and sometimes the tractor makes weird noises as it
runs over branches, etc. But no one was
out there. So I ventured out to the
front counter area where Kenny, one of the salesmen was slightly ducked
down.
“You hear that?” I said
“Oh yeah, that’s why I’m down here. I think James went running out there to see
what’s going on”
Sure enough, there were a couple of cops out there, and
sirens indicating many more were on the way.
I saw my coworker James, (a part time volunteer fireman and gun
enthusiast) standing behind the steel dumpster watching. By this time, my boss was out there and so
was a visiting factory rep and we could see that the commotion was centered
around a big junky bus painted a flat baby blue. It was parked in the next door Walmart
parking lot which sat about 50 feet beyond our dumpster, which was up against a
chain link fence. Then I saw a cop come
running down the adjacent street, pulling out his handgun. That’s when I realized the situation was not
yet contained and decided to go back in to avoid getting caught in crossfire,
which seemed like a likely possibility at that point. I went upstairs and took pictures out the
window and a couple short videos of 4 cops crouching behind a car on the street
directly between our dumpster and the funky blue bus. I tweeted them out, and said “police standoff
in progress” Just so word got out. A SWAT officer ran through our pipe yard with
a rifle and made the guys leave the dumpster area. Then he told my boss we need to
evacuate. We asked him where and he just
pointed to the recycling place next door.
So I grabbed my purse and we all ran, ducking down, through the parking
lot. About mid way across I realized my
keys were on my desk and not in my purse.
We ran around the abandoned house next door and it began to rain. Cops were everyone, and one kept driving by
in an SUV yelling at us to get inside, but the job trailer for the recycling
place was locked and no one was in there.
Then the guy (it’s pretty much a one man operation) showed up and we all
went into the job trailer.
We sat/stood around for about an hour, a couple of us
tweeting what was going on, and news stations started tweeting me to ask
permission to use my pictures, which I granted.
Then one of them asked me to call in and describe what I was seeing, and
they broadcast that live for a couple of minutes. Finally after about an hour and a half, a
female officer came in and said, “I don’t really like you guys being here, it’s
still in the line of fire.”
We pointed out that we had no place safe to go. She told us if we had keys we could
leave. Kenny had his keys, so he
left. James had keys but wanted to watch
what was going on, so he stayed with the rest of us who didn’t have keys. I told her that if she gave us 4 minutes to
go back into our building and get our keys, we’d lock it up and be out of
there. Sounded like a plan, so we all
started heading back to our place. The
recycling guy locked up the job trailer and split. We had gotten about 20 feet when she stopped
us and said, “uh oh, get back inside!”
Well, we couldn’t, because the dude took off after having locked the
trailer. Now it was starting to pour
down rain. “I thought we had a window of
time” she said, “but now he’s talking about blowing himself up. So it’s not safe. He’s not leaving that parking lot, you
understand, unless it’s in the back of a squad car. But he’s not giving up”
So we were standing out in the rain, James checked the
abandoned house and it was still unlocked, so we went in there. We stood in there for about 4 hours
alternately pacing and watching out the window (directly in the line of
fire) I got a phone call from a friend
who knew I worked over there, and she lived less than a mile away. I pondered the origin of various piles of
feces in the house, and tried to stand back from all the windows as they had
about a foot of cobweb standing out from most of them. There was no furniture in any of the rooms,
except the back room, where they had used them to prop pieces of wood for
sawing. Sawdust covered every surface in
there. We heard more gunfire
periodically, and watched the cops launch canisters of tear gas, which didn’t
seem to have much effect.
Finally about 3:15 or so, Terry, one of the salesmen got
tired of standing around and decided he was going to sneak back to the office
and grab his keys. He asked for the
location of my keys and my boss’ keys.
He and James went over there.
Terry came back with all the keys.
James stayed in there a few minutes, used the restroom, probably made a
sandwich, and finally came back to the house.
Then we all left for home, having to take an alternate route since the
road we all usually take was blocked.
But we made it. I went home and
had some popcorn and a rum and coke and watched the news. They finally brought in a SWAT vehicle called
a ripper, kind of an armored truck with forks on the front. They began ripping the side off the bus so
they could see where the guy was inside.
After taking nine shots, he kind of rolled out of the bus, which looked
like it was filled with debris. They took him to the hospital where he later
died.
For those of you who didn’t hear any of this story before,
they tried to apprehend this guy in the Walmart parking lot because they had a
warrant for drug distribution for him.
He ran into his bus and fired on the cops, hitting a police dog. The dog is fine. Is it weird that I cared more about what
happened to the dog than anyone else in this story? And I’m going to keep my keys closer at hand
from now on.
