Murder in the Hood
Tonight at 10:30 eight deep booming shots rang out close at hand, in the dark. I heard them inside my warm cozy house, then a woman screaming, screams and more screams, wild and afraid. They came from down on the corner, half a block away. I called 911 and got put on hold, then finally got through. By the time I started talking to the operator, the neighbor from across the street was screaming and wailing from deep inside her house. I found out later that's because their dog Pumpkin had run back to their house with blood all over him, and she knew that her daughter had been hit while she and her boyfriend were out walking the little mutt.
The sirens started their own faraway wailing.
I went outside in the dark to the porch. My neighbors on both sides were out on their porches, quiet and still, staring down the street. The weeping from across the street got louder, and a short, stocky woman in a white t-shirt and shorts burst out of the white house across the street screaming, a stocky black-haired man following her as she ran up the street towards the corner.
Now lots of neighbors were out walking like magnets towards the corner. The blue and red police car lights strobed frantically, down at the corner and running up the block.
A blocky white ambulance screamed up to the corner. I wondered whether to go down there, but my daughter was sleeping and I didn't want to leave her. I also wasn't sure I really wanted to see what was so real down there at the end of the block. If you don't see the bodies laying in the street, maybe they're not really there.
The mom came back, running down the street, screaming and wailing still like she would never stop. Little by little more neighbors came along. I started talking to my neighbors. We're all in shock. Josefina says in Spanish "Thirty years we've lived here and nothing like this has ever happened." Ana on the other side of me says "This is too close." Her husband came back down the street. Apparently the couple were walking the dog, and a white car pulled up, a guy got out, and shot them both and took off. The girl's alive. The guy died right there. The dog ran back to the house.
Too close.