Shots Fired, Man Down: August 6, 2008

I arrived home at about eleven thirty last night and entered through my back door. Almost immediately after closing the door, I heard a quick series of gun shots outside. It sounded like about five, coming from the north, and it also sounded like a handgun rather than a shotgun. The shots were in close enough proximity to my house and so closely followed my entering the house, that if they had come from the south I am sure I would have thought that I was being fired upon.

I immediately stepped out to my front porch to observe and I saw a man running through an empty lot appearing to have come from the general direction from which the shots had been fired. Although the general description of this person (black male, wearing a white t-shirt) was pretty generic, there did appear to be one other distinctive feature about him. It looked like he had one arm in a sling. This person was a little over a half block away from me and it was very dark outside, so I could not make his face out clearly. Based on what I could see of his features, I can make a guess as to who it was, but I would say the sling itself is probably the best bet for identifying him.

I stepped inside for a second to grab my wallet (gun permit), then went back outside to observe. Although this person had ran out of sight, he was now back on the street about three quarters of a block from my house. There were two other men standing there with him and they all three jumped in the car and quickly took off. From what I have heard from some of the officers here, it appears that the guy was probably shot in the alley and ran onto a porch of someone else’s house. One of the newspaper reporters I spoke with told me the man is in critical condition. One of the officers told me “It doesn’t look like he’s going to make it.”

For reasons I have tried to explain previously, I did not call this in. I was told by some officers that they received a few calls of shots fired from residents in this area. The police began arriving within only a couple minutes of the shots being fired and as the first car arrived I stepped to the sidewalk to flag him down. I explained where the shooting appeared to have come from, gave a brief description of the man I saw running and pointed in the direction of where he got in the car. The officer was already speeding away before I could give a description of the car and what direction it headed in, but immediately after driving past that area he returned and took the rest of my information.

Within a few minutes, the entire area was swarming with police and it did not take long before the ambulance was speeding off with the shooting victim inside. I can’t say for sure, but I believe it was only about fifteen minutes after the shooting when a local newspaper reporter arrived on the scene. She walked to the corner in front of my house where I was standing with a few of my neighbors and asked “Are you Phil Marx?” Well, it appears somebody is doing their homework.

I was further impressed when this reporter asked “Didn’t you have an incident here at your house a couple days ago. The incident that she was referring to was the fact that someone had torn one of my no-trespassing signs off my wall, ripped it to shreds, then tossed it in my flower bed. She did not get this from the blog, as I had not yet written about it. When I questioned her on this she simply replied “I listen to the scanner.“ I was impressed not only that she had noticed such a small detail, but that she had immediately recalled it when she arrived here.

I’ll write more on this in the morning, but I really have to get some sleep now. I just wanted to get this out early so I can have bragging rights on breaking the story. I’ll have more to say about the police, the media, and the neighborhood in general later.

I have continued this story on my next post.
http://myhudhouse.blogspot.com/2008/08/more-on-yesterdays-shooting.html