Last Friday night my husband and I went out for a quiet dinner, did a little food shopping then came home to pack up for the drive to visit our son for the weekend. We were planning to leave very early the next morning. It had been six weeks since we saw our son and his girlfriend and we were looking forward to making maximum use of our time together. So, with bags packed, we turned off the light and just as we were about to close our eyes a huge BANG echoed through the house!
My husband and I both jumped out of bed and looked out the window. It was so dark it was difficult to see. There are few street lights on our normally quiet suburban street except for the light at the end of our driveway and a weirdly blinking light that was apparently coming from a car we realized had just smashed into the rear of my Mother’s parked car. Crap!!
My husband threw clothes on and ran outside while I called 911. Luckily, my husband was relatively calm (on the outside) and walked up to the youngish man sitting in his smashed car. He asked the man if he was all right. The man said he was. My husband then asked him if he realized he just hit a parked car. The man got out of the car and began nervously pacing back and forth. Anxiously, I kept looking down the street waiting to see a police car pull up, nothing.
We were afraid the man would either hit my husband and leave the scene or just leave the scene. Thankfully, he did neither. With a slightly slurred, distracted voice, he told us this was “the worst day of his life”. His girlfriend had broken up with him earlier and he had just left his parents’ house. With that, he must have thought of his parents, so he took out his cell phone and we heard him trying to calm his mother down, saying, “stop over-reacting, Mom…it’s just a little fender bender”.
The man could not find either his driver’s license or his insurance card. My husband kept repeating that he should just be calm and that the police would be there soon to help. After what seemed like an eternity, but it was actually only 7 to 10 minutes, a policeman drove up.
The young policeman was extremely polite and I thought very calming in the situation. By this time it was only about 11 PM, not that late for a Friday night; I was surprised that not one neighbor turned a light on, looked outside, nothing. Anyway, back to the situation at hand. The policeman asked the obviously distraught man to move aside so he could look in the car. That was when the man told the officer that he had a gun in the front seat! A GUN!! Not only did he have a gun in the car, the gun was LOADED! My husband and I looked at each other with the same thought silently screaming out. We were completely freaked out.
So, here we were, outside our house with my Mom’s car hit, the guy’s Ford demolished, radiator fluid completely spilled out on the street, and a policeman emptying the bullets from a loaded GUN – a gun that he could very easily have used on us. The guy was obviously on something, something that luckily made him more docile than angry. This quiet Friday evening was now anything but. We were thankful that my Mom had already gone to my brother’s for the weekend since we were going away and she didn’t wish to stay home alone. She didn’t need to deal with this.
The police performed a sobriety test on the man who they told us had a prior DUI conviction. He could sort of walk toe to heel, lost his balance a few times while mumbling that he had “knee problems”. The gun was registered, but having it loaded in the car was against the law. The guy never did produce his driver’s license or insurance and registration, but he did know his driver’s license number by heart. (Who knows this?)
The police told us the man’s blood alcohol level was such that he was not drunk, even though it was clear he was “on something” besides the fact that he probably had consumed a beer or so. The man’s parents then drove up. They live in the neighborhood across the street; the man lived in a neighborhood about 25 minutes away. OUR neighborhood was not on the man’s way home and the police asked him why he was even in our neighborhood to begin with…he said he was just “taking a drive to think”.
The policeman gave us his name, not the name of the man who hit the car, and a reference number to the police report. That’s all the information we received. The police told the man to start his car and see if it was drivable. The car would not start. The policeman got in the car to see what he could do and noticed the car was in reverse, so obviously the man WAS trying to leave the scene of the accident before we came out of the house.
Nothing happened to the man with the prior DUI, who was obviously high and carrying a loaded gun while driving and crashing into a parked car, then trying to get away. Nothing. He went home with his parents while a tow truck came to take his car away.
I walked back in the house and I thought maybe it was, for the young man, lucky that he smacked into my Mom’s car, that maybe he was driving somewhere to kill himself…who knows?
The police never asked if there was a reason the gun was loaded. The policeman told us we were being hyper sensitive about the gun because we weren’t “gun people”. We are not gun people and maybe we were hyper sensitive, but maybe the guy would have shot us in order to leave the scene…would we still be hypersensitive, while dead?
It was only when we told the story to my son that he brought up an interesting point, no one had asked the guy where his now ex-girlfriend lived! Maybe she lived in our neighborhood, a neighborhood the man had no compelling interest to be in. Maybe he was on his way to her house to shoot her?! That question will never be asked and she will probably never even know he was there.
I was a bit disappointed that the police did nothing to the man, no ticket, nothing. I hate to say it, but I have to wonder if the police would have acted the same had the young man been African American or wearing Muslim garb. I bet they would have hauled him into the police station and at least given him a ticket for reckless driving and perhaps a citation for carrying a loaded gun. Who knows? Obviously I can never be sure and maybe the police would have acted exactly the same way. I doubt it.
I am so grateful no one was hurt and hope that I am never that close to a loaded gun again.
My husband and I finally feel asleep and thankfully enjoyed a beautiful weekend with my son and his girlfriend. This whole experience showed me, once again, that life could change on a dime. Be thankful and enjoy when things are normal.
Have a great day!
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