In LA it was normal to hear gunshots 6 out of seven nights every week.\u00a0 Usually off in the distance; sometimes close by.\u00a0 (Like the time the guy on the corner was assassinated on his front porch.\u00a0 Scroll to the bottom to read that story.)<\/p>\n
But the gunfire was just part of the background noise you get used to. And police helicopters.\u00a0 If the gunshots were local, we could count on soon hearing a police helicopter circling overhead, even shining their searchlight in our back yard.\u00a0 That was always reassuring.<\/p>\n
Our first house in Michigan was in Portage, adjacent to Kalamazoo.\u00a0 Three bedrooms on a third of an acre (a 9-condo footprint if in L.A.)\u00a0 in the middle of Michigan suburbia.\u00a0 Kalamazoo county population a bit more than 250,000.\u00a0 And after a few months we realized two things we had not heard since our arrival: gunshots and helicopters.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to our new home in rural Vicksburg.\u00a0 We are out in the middle of nowhere.\u00a0 Surrounded by farms and woodlands.\u00a0 No helicopters, but plenty of gunfire.\u00a0 But not from rival gangs.\u00a0 Hunters hunting.\u00a0 Hunters working on their aim before hunting.\u00a0 Or just people enjoying target practice.\u00a0 Once you get over the anxiety of a stray bullet, it is the least startling version of gunshots we’ve ever heard.<\/p>\n
Anxiety-free gunshots?\u00a0 We’re not in L.A. any more.<\/p>\n
The time the guy on the corner was assassinated on his front porch?<\/p>\n
It was about eight o’clock at night.\u00a0 We had just sat down to watch TV in our den which was at the front of the house.\u00a0 The windows were open as it was a typically warm L.A evening.\u00a0 We heard six gunshots in rapid succession; close by.\u00a0 Rapid succession as in as fast as you could pull a trigger.\u00a0 We both (wife Carrie and I)\u00a0 jumped up and headed outside and toward the sound of gunshots. (I am not able to explain this behavior, but it was not an anomaly.) I was dialing 911 on my cellphone by the time we got to the sidewalk.\u00a0 Before the 911 operator answered we heard four more shots.\u00a0 Ten in all; the magazine limit in California.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was giving 911 the details as we approached the intersection just 200 feet from our front door, where we saw the car full of bad guys pulling away.<\/p>\n
The police arrived in force in an amazing 60 seconds from my call.\u00a0 We gave them the description of what we had heard and seen.\u00a0 About 20 of our neighbors slowly came out to gawk.<\/p>\n
We learned later from our officer friends that this was a revenge killing. The dead guy had recently been released from prison.\u00a0 He had at some point, testified against the shooters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When gunfire, police helecopters’ searchlights and police sirens were the norm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,3],"tags":[271,114,110,270],"class_list":["post-1431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-michigan","category-news","tag-california","tag-kalamazoo","tag-michigan","tag-pomona"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1431"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1723,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions\/1723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}