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Our Town an account of the police shooting at 2504 Alameda
10/21/12 By Amy Hawthorne
Nothing brings out the neighbors like the sound of sirens at 2 am, and so it was on our street this Sunday morning. It wasn’t the emergency vehicles or pulsing lights that woke us from our sleep; it was the sounds of mayhem that preceded all the commotion.
My husband and I are used to sirens, since we live sandwiched between a hospital, two busy streets and a fire station located only blocks away. We lovingly refer to these wailings as the “songbirds of Vallejo”. This morning, things were not so funny as we heard the shouts of a man’s voice grow from alarm to panic. Then, the sound of an argument…or was it a warning?….and the word “FIRE”!
We thought it was a fight between a couple of the homeless men that tend to wander this area and the voices were very close to our house… just down the block. The noise became more complicated, as if someone was trying to pound their way through a wooden door. Then came the sound of breaking glass. More glass was shattered, then again and again, voices became louder and more hysterical. Even in our sleepy haze we knew this was different than anything we could imagine and the words “domestic violence” or “intruder” weren’t enough to describe what we were hearing.
My husband and I huddled by the upstairs bedroom window, looking down at the street, through the neighbor’s Eucalyptus tree. While the noise continued to escalate, I wondered why there was no sign of action in the neighborhood. The residents know each other quite well and we’ve had moments of alarm in the past so, the black night seemed especially empty by the lack of responses. Yet, when I called 911, all I had to say to the operator was my name and address and she told me others had already called in and help was on the way. One, two, three….each minute feels like a jammed emergency door as you wonder if this has anything to do with the drive-by shooting that occurred days ago. I think it had been Vallejo’s 19th violent death and, that too, happened close by.
Finally, the sound of sirens pierced the air. What happened next kept all of us hidden in the dark until the gunshots had ended and our street were filled with police and emergency vehicles that came from every direction.
Shadows eventually drizzled into the street and gathered behind the yellow police tape or the squad cars, discussing details and shivering in the chill of the night. We shared our shock and sorrow while we gathered information on the two men who lived in the house where all this was happening. Evidently, the paranormal world of these two men had begun to unravel days earlier. One neighbor had been invited to have lunch with them tomorrow yet, the night before, they answered a knock at the door at 2am and one of the men asked if he could retrieve some medication that had been thrown over their fence.
Now, as the clapping of the police helicopter and gunfire fade into history, I recall this evening with mixed emotions. Within an hour of that 911 call, the ambulance had removed the body of one of our neighbors and the fate of his roommate will be determined after he is back on his medication and his mind is forced to fathom the depth of this nightmare. There had been so many squad cars and emergency vehicles that our block looked like a Hollywood movie scene.
When the police arrived they found a naked man who had been standing on one of the many cars in his driveway and was now headed inside the house. After a barrage of yelling and gunshots, he had been shot. Apparently, he had been trying to defend his home and roommate from demons that haunted their house. They had previously talked about holding a “ritual”. I guess that’s why they set fire to it. One of my most beloved neighbors, who lived next door to this incident, told me that one of these men thought the moon had developed a crack in it. It was his plan to buy up the houses on the street, close it off and ….and what? Protect us from Armageddon?
While police gathered information and emergency crews remove equipment and a lifeless body, we hugged, cried, asked questions, gasped in horror and congratulated a family on a new baby, recently born at the hospital just down the block. The new parents are barely in their teens and the father used to play in my back yard. We worry about their future and the challenges of early parenthood while confessing our own earlier mistakes. They meet my new husband for the first time.
As we chatted, the police confirmed there were no other occupants in the burning house and it was safe to enter. Grey smoke billowed from the upstairs window.
I hugged one sweet neighbor to keep her warm, as she imagined flying high above the earth in the police helicopter that was beaming a light down on our pod of onlookers. She was a retired teacher who played piano beautifully, until a few years ago, when she took her own journey into old age and medication. It wasn’t long ago that a neighbor found her wandering the street in her pajamas. That kind neighbor not only walked her home, she monitored her meds and challenged family members and caregivers until this woman was able to function again and join us on the street tonight. She is now an “innocent”, living life like a large child with too many memories to keep track of. When she heard that the incident might have something to do with medications and hallucinations, she quietly said, “I know what that’s like”.
I overheard another neighbor ask her husband to talk to a man who was standing below a streetlight with a large camera propped on his right shoulder. She wanted to make sure the story of these two neighbors, who had gone beyond sanity, revealed them as complex humans. They were destructive in monstrous ways, yet we also know them as kind, helpful and funny. The front yard of the “haunted” house was filled with bright flowers and decorations. They didn’t want to hurt anyone except the black spirits that filled their lives. To make things worse, they probably mixed their meds with street drugs. Who could argue that these two men were not good neighbors or citizens? They put us at risk and frightened us. They damaged our trust and our peace of mind. They broke laws and added to the number of Vallejo shooting deaths that others scoff at, in the newspapers and in their gossip.
Yet, I will lie in my bed this morning, knowing the headlines only tell a small piece of what really happened. There will be another sunrise and our lives continue to move along but, for a few short moments, this neighborhood was held in a mist of history, consequences and hopes. No sadness will destroy what we have built together and our fears are watered down by a new connection, created by a communal horror.
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3.23 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved." |
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