Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Wednesday, Jan. 07, 2004 - 2:11 a.m.

So, I'm driving to work today, and I pull out onto the main street to head over to the highway, and I look down at the clock in my car, and I think, cool, 3:41; I'll be at work by 4, and I look over to my left, and what do I see, but 5 guys running wildly down the sidewalk.

Like, hellbent for leather. Hauling ass. Bookin' it, as we used to say in high school. Flying. Heads back, arms pumping, clothes flying wildly back in the wind they are creating with their rapid motion. Seriously running. So I think to myself, well that's a little odd. Why are those guys running down a sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon? And so I look a little closer and I see that it's 4 black guys and a guy who struck me as Indian (coulda been Hispanic, for all I know, but the overriding impression was Indian), all running about 4 - 6 feet apart from each other. And they're all wearing black pants and black hooded sweatshirts, except for the Indian guy bringing up the rear, who is wearing a brown dress shirt and slacks. So I think why in hell is that guy chasing those guys? And then I see he's carrying this long, very black object that looks like a billyclub, and I wonder what the hell he needs with that, and I'm peering at it as we draw closer together, and I realize that is no billyclub, it's a gun of some sort. A very long, very big, very black gun. So I look back at the others, who have now drawn even with me and are passing by, and I realize the guy directly across from me also has a gun. The biggest, blackest automatic pistol I've ever seen in my life. Like, seriously black. I couldn't believe how black it was. It looked impossibly black, for some reason. And really, really big. And then he looks over at me, and we make eye contact for several seconds, long enough for me to think hmm, maybe I shouldn't be staring this guy with the really big gun down, because I don't want him to think I'm going to ID him, and then we both broke the gaze, because he was running pellmell down an uneven sidewalk, and I was driving down a busy street, and I suspect neither one of us wanted to have an accident. So I whipped my car into the Chevron parking lot there - the same one where the masher works - and I dig frantically for my cell phone to call 911, and then I think DUH, stupid, see what kind of car they get into so you can tell the police, but by the time I turned around, they were gone. Long gone. History. I drove up the street and looked down the side streets, but they were outta there.

So I went back to the Chevron, still trying to get 911 on the line, which was like ridiculously wasted energy, but I kept trying, because it's not every freaking day you see men running down a city sidewalk bearing firearms, and I figured they HAD to have been up to no good. I saw that there were people outside the jewelry store across the street, so I parked on the sidewalk, basically, at the Chevron, and got out and crossed over and asked if there'd been a robbery, and it turned out there *had*. And bizarrely, not a single one of the 12 or so people inside the jewelry store could identify the thieves. I was the only freaking person who had seen what they looked like or where they went. Even the two people on the corner, who were impossibly dimwitted, God bless 'em, couldn't tell you what they looked like. And these two people had seen the robbery in progress. They were passing by, looked in the OPEN doorway, and saw the people inside all lying face down on the floor and two men moving around inside, and they thought it was - are you ready for this? "A safety drill."

I kid you not.

I don't even know what to do with that, but there you are. It was all I could do not to let my mouth fall open in disbelief when they said that, but whatever. They even saw a third man who was part of the gang milling about and holding the door open, and they STILL couldn't identify anyone. The guys inside (2 of them) had a hammer and were going thru smashing the cases and grabbing the stuff inside, and I assume waving guns about. They weren't very bright, though: they left their hammer behind, lying on the counter. So they got what they figured was enough stuff, and then left the store, and here's the really dumb part, as they were leaving, the stupid store owner emptied 4 rounds at them from the upper floor of the store. I say stupid, because the guy was a terrible shot. I saw the bullet holes he made, and trust me, he should never be allowed to fire a gun at all, especially under stress. One of them passed thru a window and could easily have hit one of the people outside. Would have, if someone had been standing there. And the rest of his shots were just as wild. Plus there were two little kids in the store, with their mother. Any one of those shots - especially the one that hit the steel post, left a gigantic dent, and ricocheted off of it - could have hit the kids or their mom. And can you imagine how terrifying that must be, to be 10 years old, shopping with your mom and have just gone thru an armed robbery with men with guns screaming at you to lie down while they rob the place, and then someone starts frigging firing? Jeezus. That poor little girl was just traumatized. I have never felt so sorry for a kid in my life, especially having been robbed at gunpoint myself when I was 18 and knowing exactly how she felt. Poor little tyke. I was amazed at how calm everyone else was, though. Especially the mom, who cracked me up, because the policeman said "do you mean to tell me all you people were in here at the time and none of you know what these guys look like?" and the mom had this perfect tone of voice and calmly said "they started screaming at us to lie facedown on the floor and we all did what they told us." If I had been in a less serious situation, I would have laughed, she was so dry the way she said it. What a cool mom. She must have been freaking out the whole time, but she kept her cool, even when it was over. Damn.

So anyway, I gave my statement to the police, who were pretty nice, despite the fact that I was a total idiot (you try saying smart things in the same situation). They said I gave a good description, which is pretty scary, because I feel it was pretty sketchy, so if that's what cops consider a good description, there are a whole lotta people out there giving really bad ones. It was funny when I was trying to tell them what the guns looked like, because the one policeman had this notebook with actual photos of guns in it, and he showed me like this little snubnose .38 revolver, and I said NO, it was an automatic and very big. So he ups the ante a little, and I go no, it was BIG. And so we had a discussion about that during which I think we were both satisfied in my gun description. So then my description of what were now the suspects went out over the radio, which was a little surreal, and then the detectives showed up and I spoke to one of them briefly, and she let me go, and I got to work...late, damn it.

Peace out,
Katie

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