Scary Experience!!!

I forgot it was April Fool's today until I was reading other friend's blogs. But this following story is for real. It isn't a joke and it was scary! It's just a coincidence it happened today, of all days!

I had just gotten home from going to Fred Meyer to get groceries. Kyle had just gotten home too. He was stopping by for lunch before going back to work. Well, Kyle had taken Preston inside and I was still outside. We still had groceries to carry in and Kate was wandering around. Kyle and I were talking outside when this strange man was speed walking down our small street. I was only feet away from this man. He had a tank top on and was walking fast. Kyle said out loud "I wonder what he's up to?" The man probably heard him, but kept walking. Then, seconds later another man in a black jacket was scooting around Darbi's fence (a neighbor and good friend). He was scooting between blackberry bushes and their fence to get into their yard. Kyle knew something was up because there were these two weird men. So Kyle grabbed his cell phone and started crossing the street to go look in Darbi's backyard for that guy. At that moment a white unmarked police car came speeding down our street and we knew these men were running away!!! Yikes! We were all outside and these two weird men were within feet of us and our kids!

So anyway, we tell the officers where these two men went and they see one of them and both of them jump out to go after the tank top guy. He had gone to a swamp area past all the houses and past a metal fence. It is full of blackberry bushes where he went. (sidenote: Blackberry bushes are super prickly and they hurt!) Meanwhile, Darbi was having lunch with her kiddos and saw this man in her backyard- scary! She picked up her phone and was about to dail 911 and saw he had moved into her neighbor's yard. (Her backyard only has two side fences so this guy could scoot around between the fence and lots of blackberry bushes to get into the neighbor's yard.) Darbi came to the front door and saw Kyle and I pointing to the policemen. We told her what we saw and she told us about the guy in her backyard. The police told us to stay inside. Darbi and I watched from our front window hoping they would catch these guys. It was scary just watching it play out in our little neighborhood!!!

A few minutes later a group of policemen came with a K-9 dog. Eventually, the dog went down into the swamp area and found the tank top guy and bit him on the leg. So they caught him. They couldn't find the other guy so Darbi told them he might be in her neighbor's yard still. I told the policeman to check the crawl space and that is when he said they found him in the crawl space under Darbi's neighbor's house. Phew! We were so glad they caught both of them. Kyle left for work while 4-5 patrol cars, ambulance and fire truck were pulling into our development. It was crazy so I had to take a picture. The guy in the crawl space was bit by the dog too so he was limping! I hope these guys learned their lesson! They had both guys out of the police cars and were bandaging up their wounds before taking them away. We got to watch it all... I asked one of the police officers what these guys were doing and he said they were robbing a house up the street and there were 3 guys. They caught one earlier and then got these two guys in our neighborhood. What an adventure!

I normally feel very safe in our neighborhood, but we don't live far from all the crime and nastiness that goes on a street or two away so this is an example of how it effects us.