Neighborhood Watch?
I was at my kitchen sink one beautiful morning. As I rinsed the coffee cup I saw a car drive up my driveway, three men got out of the car and hurriedly ran to a neighbors house which was perpendicular to mine. The driver reversed out of the driveway and went someplace, where I don’t know? My neighborhood was very quiet, and that beautiful morning was no different. I finished what I was doing and went down to the basement to do some laundry. My school was closed for a week for some holiday but my kids schools ran by a different schedule. A couple of hours later the doorbell rang. I looked out the window and saw police cars parked in the street. I opened the door to this cop who simply asked me if I saw anything unusual this morning. I told him the only thing I saw were 4 men in a green car, (I believe,) and what they did.) He asked me if I could describe the men. I responded, “ I could only describe the driver and he looked like a young version of Juan Valdez in the coffee commercials. I did notice all of them were Hispanic. Then a detective asked me if I could look at a car that was now parked in my neighbors driveway. I walked to the corner with him and saw the car. Yes, that was it! I told them the time I saw the incident. I thought I was finished, but now I was curious as to what happened in my neighbor’s house. It was disconcerting when an ambulance pulled up and took someout out.
I was now scared! Who were these people and would they come back? Did they not see me looking at them? Probably not, it was bright outside and I didn’t have any light on in the kitchen.
I thought my part in whatever it was was finished. But NO! The next thing I knew I had to go down to the precinct and sit with a police artist to recreate the face of the young man I saw. No matter how he adjusted his image, I kept saying, he was sweet looking, nice looking, everything you are drawing looks sinister. He thought I was a loon, he was probably right!
It was a nasty crime. My neighbor who I only knew by name had a business and once a week, the money, all cash from vending machines came to that house basement where it was counted and deposited. It was an inside job. One of the people responsible for bringing the money in just got tired of only getting paid. He knew that there were many locations for the vending machines and different people collected for him. This guy figured he would get the total take. Whether he intended to kill my neighbor or not, wasn’t clear. When he went into the basement there were several people there . He tied the people up and hit the one guy, the owner over the head with something, I have no idea what it was. A good reason to not have a cash business in your house! The owner survived,, but our little bubble in the suburbs was now tarnished.
