My sleepy little town

This past week my sleepy little town was brought crashing into reality. It was a normal evening, my family and I were outside enjoying the warm summer night when my littlest daughter decided to go for a walk. She lets me know this like any other one year old would, by taking off down the side walk and periodically looking back to see if I am giving chase. I finally catch up to her, take her hand and begin our lazy stroll down the block.

Just as I turned the corner I hear my husband call my name. Now, my husband is normally a very level-headed, even toned man, but something about the way he yelled my name made me stop in my tracks, pick up my daughter and start heading back towards my house.

As I am walking I notice a man standing in our front yard with my husband. This man is not someone I know from a distance but I see he must live close for he is standing in just his socks on our lawn. As I approach I am quickly searching my acquaintance filing cabinet in my brain to see if I should know this person, but alas I come up empty.

I make it to the lawn and the look on my husbands face reads louder than any rock concert. The man begins to tell us that the reason there are helicopters flying around our neighborhood was that there is a gunman on the run and that we should not be walking around the block right now. (Now, I know what you're thinking, "didn't I find it strange that there were three helicopters circling my neighborhood?" well, I probably would have, but not 10 minutes before this conversation, my husband and I discussed the possible reasons for these helicopters, one, the storm damage that occurred from the massive storms we had been having or two, the boat races that were taking place at that moment on the Detroit River, either choice did not come close to the awful story being played out in front of me)

Mike, my husband, and I quickly but calmly take our children inside and lock the doors. My 4 year old daughter Ava wants to know why she can't play baseball anymore with her Daddy. What to say? We tell her there is a bad guy that the police need to find and we need to stay out of their way so they can do their jobs. This seems to pacify her, so we move on.

Thankfully part of the story we were told, that the man on the run had killed his wife and child, ended up being false, but there was a man with a gun, he did fire a shot in a house, but unfortunately the shot ended his own life. This information was not readily available to anyone for another day. I searched online, watched the news and there was hardly mention of it. This is BIG news in my little town. Big News. Things like this don't happen here in my sleepy little town.. well, they didn't used to anyways...