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Would YOU Open the Door? I Did
“Please bro, we got shot! We got shot! Please, I’m begging you! He got shot in his foot.”
10:55 PM, Friday night. Someone POUNDS on the door, then rings the doorbell. I crack it open, with two of my older teenaged boys somewhere behind me. I see a pair of black youths. They were on the run, with one shoe between them, no phones, and one of them was bleeding from his foot. One is holding the other one up.
“I swear to God, I got no gun on me! I got shot by a guy. I got no gun, I got no weapon. Nothing, I swear!” And they start to strip to show me they are unarmed.
Don’t take my word for it. Here is the video from our camera. And, as you can see, I let them in. I directed them first to sit on one couch – but then, when they expressed fear that the killers would shoot them through the window, I moved them elsewhere. They did what they were told.
We called 911. These guys were in serious shock. The one who was shot couldn’t sit up, and he kept collapsing, eyes rolling back. The other one was shaking uncontrollably. Actual damage was minimal – 4 bullet holes in a hoodie, a graze wound on a thigh, and possibly the one who claimed he was shot in the foot actually was – or he mangled it in the rush to get away.
I don’t know what would have happened if I had denied them entry. I doubt the killers pursued them, though the victims (or perhaps “losers” would be more accurate) certainly were in fear of being hunted down. So they probably would not have been gunned down had I turned them away. Their friend, by the way, did not die on the scene. The shooting was a few hundred feet away, and ours was the first house they approached.
On the other hand, it was a cold night, and these two were in such shock that I believe it could have killed the one. I have never before seen black guys look as white as sheets. And I would have felt bad had they died because I did the sensible thing and refused them entry to my home where my wife and children were sleeping.
We were prudent. We kept our distance. We gave them a glass of water and had them sit down.
In hindsight, we had heard the gunshots – there was a string of them perhaps a minute before they came to my door.
What happened after we let them in was even more instructive. We called 911, and had to suffer through the most inane and incompetent dispatcher imaginable. The police response was… underwhelming. They came to our door a full 20 minutes after the losers did – 17 minutes after we called 911. For reported victims of a shooting. And, even more impressively, the first police car parked in front and waited. And waited – until there were three or four cars in all, and they could approach, as a clump, an open doorway where the well-lit homeowner was gesturing them inside.
(I was reminded of Terry Pratchett’s Nightwatch, which specialized in never running too quickly, because you never want to actually catch the criminal. Nothing good comes from being too eager.)
One of the two called his mother, on speakerphone, at 11:02. The conversation went something like this:
“Mom, Mom, I’ve been shot.”
“Serves you right.”
“Tell my father I been shot!”
“Where you at?”
“Some Jewish person’s house.”
Click.
Redial. 5 times. Mom doesn’t answer.
So he calls his grandmother. Who is much more sympathetic, and promises to meet him at the nearest hospital.
This is all interspersed with the call to 911, who keeps us on hold, while Loser #1 keeps cursing that the police have not responded yet. He, too, keenly bewails the state of policing in the City of Baltimore. Though when they do arrive, both youths experience sudden onset amnesia. They don’t even seem to be able to remember their own names!
What has the world come to, I wonder.
We reckon it was all a drug deal gone bad. And while it happened on Shabbos, clearly active shooters and gunshot victims count as a threat to life, so we did not hesitate to do things (like turn on cell phones and use them) that we ordinarily never do on Shabbos. All this time, there is foot traffic outside, families with strollers and children walking back from Shabbos dinners to their homes. Was it better that they not know a shooting had occurred less than a block away?
The police came in force – at least half a dozen vehicles, including the ambulance. They blocked off the road, and hung out after the shooting for the better part of an hour. At no point did any police officer ask me or my kids any questions. They came in, assessed the losers, and they all left.
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Good god. We live in a dream world.
This is priceless.
You had an exciting evening.
Sounds like my mom, except she would have asked the follow-up “What were you doing?”
I don’t find it “priceless”. I find it extremely sad.
Thank you for taking them in.
BTW, blacks are very ethnic/religious conscious. Letting the relative know they were at “some Jewish person’s house” is code for “I’m safe here.” It helps the relative identify what neighborhood or community they are at as well.
I would have opened the door but I would have had a gun on them for the time they were in the house.
That, too.
I would have opened the door…. only to show Them My gun and tell Them, “Y’all better move on about Yer business.”
Me, too.
I wrote the above knowing it might get publicity. So I left little details out, here and there.
You sound a little bit like my parents.
Back in the 70s there was a late night knock on the door. This was in rural Otter Tail County, along a state highway that didn’t get a lot of traffic, but the parsonage was the only house in miles that was so close to the road as their place. A bunch of young men of teen age told a story of car trouble some distance back on the road, and asked for a place to sleep.
I was graduated from college by then and had been married a few years. My youngest siblings were probably still living at home. Mom and Dad let the boys in, gave them something to eat, and helped them arrange places to sleep in the living room, though they did have some apprehension. The only gun Dad had, as far as I know, was his deer hunting rifle. I’m not sure where he kept it, but it was probably in a bedroom closet, and it didn’t enter the story. Come to think of it, he probably still had his 12 gauge shotgun, too. Mom and Dad didn’t sleep easily, but in the morning Mom fed the boys breakfast at the big dining room table, and they were all polite and agreeable in conversation. After breakfast they went on their way, on foot.
After they left Dad called the sheriff’s office and described the young men. Some officers went to pick them up, and yes, they had been in trouble with the law. I don’t remember if they were wanted for car theft or if it was something else.
Mom later told me the story over the phone, and I thought, “Yes, that’s just like my parents.” Both the taking in of a bunch of strange boys and giving them a place to sleep, and the calling of the law on them were just the sort of thing they would do.
Mom told the story again the next time we visited in person. I don’t recall that my younger siblings ever said anything about it. I should ask them some time if they remember the incident.
After Mom and Dad died nearly ten years ago, I became the custodian of their diaries and journals. Dad’s reminiscences mentioned the incident and that they had been a bunch of black boys. Nobody had mentioned that part, and I hadn’t asked. Black people were exceedingly rare in that part of rural north-central Minnesota in those days, so they would have stood out. No wonder there was no question of identifying them when the sheriff’s officers went to pick them up.
You did the right thing.
Code? What is the source of that information?
These guys were not in any state of mind to work out a code. His mother asked a question, and he answered it. I am pretty sure she found the answer so implausible that she was not prepared to listen to any more lies.
Glad you are all okay.
Thank you for sharing this incredible story!
Here in Cleveland, I read a lot of posts on the Nextdoor website from neighbors who heard or saw someone knocking on their door, and were frightened out of their wits, never answering. And the door-knockers are usually in broad daylight and almost never nefarious-looking people in an agitated state. They are often described (or on video from porch cameras) as dressed in uniform (like a public utility worker) or otherwise normal looking people, sometimes holding clip boards or other appropriate materials. In no case do I ever remember the door-knocker to have been exposed as person of criminal intent. In one case, a neighbor had video of young children knocking on her door and running away, I prank that I played as a kid. And this lady wanted them locked up in juvenile detention!
The mindset of these people who post these “incidents” is one of total paranoia. In comments they and others often promote the idea that you should never answer your doorbell to someone you do not know, or even someone you do know if the call is unexpected. They don’t even advocate “talking through the closed door.” Pegging these door-knockers as persons to look out for, they often share pictures of them with neighbors and sometimes the police (who probably roll their eyes when they see these reports).
I personally think this is nuts. Maybe it is okay if you are a super-vulnerable person, such as a lone woman or an elderly person with valuables, but on the whole, this attitude is not good for society. Home invasions are not so common, even where I live, that you need to barricade yourself inside your home and draw all the window shades. Answering your door, like simply walking down the street, is a very slightly risky activity like most every other part of life. If we wanted to remove all risk, we would not drive cars, fly in planes, play sports, or even climb stairs. Life would then not be worth getting up in the morning.
I lived in Houston when Nextdoor came out. As a dutiful neighbor who wanted help to reduce crime, return missing puppies to their owners, and get potholes filled quickly, I joined that thing. It’s the worst of social media, worse than the Jack Dorsey-era twitter. As you say, all the paranoiacs in the neighborhood inflict their neuroses on the rest of us. Every neighborly snit has to be fought out online. It magnifies the most trivial things into issues of burning concern for the entire neighborhood. I got off that thing in about a week, although it took years, long after I had moved away, to get rid of the ongoing reminders to re-subscribe.
My favorite part of Nextdoor (which seems to have calmed down in our area) was all the people reporting anytime a van drove slowly down a street in the neighborhood, or worse, turned around in someone’s driveway, because clearly they’re casing the area for burglary or kidnapping of children.
Years of living among black people.
In the mid-1980s, very early one morning—02:00 or so—I was sitting on the exterior steps ascending to the door of my apartment building in Philadelphia when I observed a man limping towards me on the sidewalk. As he approached, I saw that he had a circular hole in the front of a thigh from which blood was running. “I’ve been shot in the leg,” he said without emotion as he passed. He didn’t reply to my offer of help but just continued unsteadily down Green Street. I had with me the cordless handset for my house phone, so I called 911. “I think you should know there’s a shot man walking in my neighborhood,” I told the dispatcher, and a short time later a squad car stopped by and I gave his description to a couple of cops. I heard nothing more about the matter. Just one of those things that happen if you’re a pioneer living in a part of the city undergoing gentrification at the height of the crack epidemic.
I didn’t mean a “code” as in a private code a family might employ.
I meant as an informal method of a community exchanging information.
I grew up in the 1950’s in Chicago. People were much more likely to ask someone they didn’t know at a social gathering “What neighborhood do you live in?” rather than “So what do you do for a living?”.
In the 1950’s, when an individual mentioned a neighborhood, that told the person making the inquiry a lot. My neighborhood, Brainerd, was working class to lower level white collar people. Most people were Irish Catholics, or Protestants. Everyone was white of course. Beverly was the neighborhood adjoining ours, and it was professionals, biz managers and old money. Most Chicagoans knew the neighborhood names for the entire city from our neck of the woods clear up to Rogers Park, at the north end of the metro area, a distance of 40 miles.
At the height of my teenage rebellion, when I was 18 or 19, if I stayed out late at night,when my mom inquired where I was, and I said “Skokie” she was far more relieved at my not coming home than when I said “Dave and Cynthia’s house”, as they lived in the projects. (Skokie was the upscale suburb occupied mostly by Jewish people.)
Gentrification of many metro areas has made the idea of a neighborhood community more difficult in terms of letting someone know what the other person’s status might be. But a parent of a black teenager is probably going to feel a lot better about knowing their offspring is at a Jewish person’s house, than at the home on a street where even the police don’t like to go.
I have a strangers-at-the-door story, but no crime was involved. During a dreadful Minnesota blizzard, a young couple showed up at our door, asking to come in. They had gone out apartment shopping with a baby in a blizzard, and got stuck in a ditch behind our house. We invited them in and they spent the night and some of the next day. Maybe it was even two nights? I can’t say for sure, this is a 25+ year-old story.
My mom and stepdad lived essentially next door to us and my stepdad took his snowmobile to Walmart and bought them some diapers. Maybe some baby food, too, I don’t remember for sure. The next day the mother of the man or woman came and picked them up. A day later, things had calmed down enough outside that we towed their SUV into my brother’s shop, hoping that if it warmed up a bit it would start. It did not. The mother who picked up the young family was the actual owner of the SUV and she was rather cranky on the phone that we failed to start her vehicle and she would have to call a tow truck. I guess it wasn’t enough that we put up her grandbaby and the parents for a day and a half, somehow that obligated us to fix her vehicle for free, in her mind. You might think they could at least send us a Thank You card, but we never heard from them again.
That’s kinda funny. Was it that obvious? I suppose being day 3 of Hanukkah it probably was.
I would have helped them but definitely would have grabbed the nearest handgun before opening the door. You should have left them on the porch to assess the injuries. (Keeping the mess outside helps too.) Moving them unnecessarily could have been fatal.
Two quick stories:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChoosingBeggars/ would like this story.
The only way you do not realize you are at a Jewish home when you visit my house on Shabbos is if you are entirely blind, or do not know what a mezuza, yarmulke, tzitzis, or black hat signify.
The “youths” who come through our neighborhoods while “shopping” refer to our area as “Jew-Town.” There are virtually no non-Jewish caucasians living here.
Quite sensible.
Embrace the power of “and”
Member@MiffedWhiteMale
You both have pegged Nextdoor right on the head! I see the same exact kind of posts of neuroses and trivial complaints along with the slow van watchers here, too. Also a lot of people with hard-luck stories pleading for help or money. It’s difficult to know how many are legit or scams.
Wouldn’t it be great fun to rent a white van, put a “Free Candy” sign in the window along with some stickers of zoo animals, and drive slowly around your own neighborhood? Then go home and read the comments on NextDoor.
Don’t give me any tantalizing ideas!