Vicarious Thoughts

Things you don’t hear too often (luckily) …. Police siren approaching then just after it goes past – the siren stops at the same time an almighty crunching sound is heard. Ran to the front gate expecting to see a mangled car against one of the gum trees – but it was only groinch of the car as it turned tightly and quickly into the driveway two doors down. Husband suggests we head back inside as other cop cars pull up and someone uses a megaphone to tell the driver of the car who pulled into the driveway first to get out of the car slowly etc etc.

Instead – the guy does a runner. Street was cordoned off for a couple of minutes – and now there’s just a cop stationed at the top of the street.

EDIT: 1/2 hour later and just heard 5 cars move to one location about two blocks from here. Hopefully they got the guy this time.

EDIT: 5 minutes later – spoke too soon. Looked out window and there’s a guy with a gun (armed offenders squad). Beautiful photo opportunity. He appeared to be just checking out the place – he’s now out the front and so is a dog handler. Pics or it didn’t happen applies I know – so pics have been obtained – not good ones though :P

EDIT: 15 minutes later? – Street is cordoned off – Guy is holed up in garage apparently with a firearm. Armed Offenders Squad has surrounded the place. Negotiation is underway but doesn’t seem to be going so well. (I think I’d get bored if I had that guys job). Keep missing the interesting pics.

EDIT: 4:30pm – Realised I forgot to mention this is happening two doors down. Negotiations still haven’t proceeded. Husband is out back grabbing pics of AOS on the roof of a nearby building.

EDIT: 4:45pm – Finally agreed to communicate – they’ve slung a phone line across our property and our neighbour’s for him. Wonder if he can make toll calls? Need to get a new camera – this one is too unresponsive when it matters and I don’t *think* it’s the operator.

EDIT: 5:00pm – So they go to the trouble of slinging this phone around the neighbourhood and now they guy won’t grab the phone and use it. I can see the negotiator clearly now – but it’s too dark. Feel sorry for these cops standing outside in the cold – was a nice clear sunny day with only a little rain so it’s probably gonna be bitterly cold again tonight.

EDIT: 5:30pm – Not much happening now since the guy finally retrieved the phone and then after taking a while to work out how to use this complex device … started talking to the negotiator on this. Hopefully the next update will be to say this interesting experience is over and things are back to normal. I wonder where my neighbours are?

Small bit of background detail – this started at 2:40pm (from my perspective) when I heard the police siren and the crunching noise.

EDIT: 6:30pm – It’s over :) – Guy came out and was taken away – dogs got overexcited as they do :) . Police are as you would expect quite tight lipped but did let us know there was a firearm involved and no one was injured. Sounds like the negotiator did a good job :) Extra supplies had just been brought in as they expected it to drag on into the night. It’s been raining on and off for the last hour.
Pics below – please note these were all taken surreptitiously so these are the best ones.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 at 3:38 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.