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Another reason to answer your door, at night,armed
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Neighbor won't bow to thugs
More columns by Darrell Smith
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By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
June 30, 2002
Eddie's my neighbor in the neighborhood we call home. He works hard to get his business off the ground, has a beautiful wife and children who love him.
He also has a problem -- really, all of us in our neighborhood do.
It's the thug who beat him Wednesday night with the butt end of a gun in the doorway of his home.
Eddie Flores still has the bruised lump on his forehead and the anger inside to prove it.
We have a pretty good idea who did this. We hope the police do, too, but for now, there are just questions. Starting with one.
Why?
Eddie thinks he knows. Two weeks before, he and his kids went to get ice cream from the push-cart vendor across the street.
A group of guys trying to make time with some neighborhood girls drove down the street once, then a second time.
A look was all it took.
"What sparked it all was we looked at them, and they looked at us," Eddie said.
To the thugs, it was the wrong look.
About 10:30 p.m. Wednesday night, at least one of them came back to settle the imagined score.
It started with a knock on the door. Eddie thought it was our neighbor across the street.
It wasn't.
"When I opened the door, I was hit over the head with the gun. Then I heard a shot," he said. His attacker fired a shot in the air.
Eddie had just gotten out of the shower and was in his skivvies, so he shielded himself with the door. He swears that if he was fully clothed and had opened the door wider, he would have been shot.
His wife called 911 and rounded up the kids. Someone was beating on the windows, and Eddie heard the same thing over and over.
"You're gonna die. You wanna get shot?"
The police came within minutes, checked out the street, talked to some folks, took their reports. We hope they're on the case.
But right now, that doesn't help him. His wife and kids stay with friends at night now.
Eddie sleeps in the middle room now. There are not as many windows there.
He's a prisoner in his own home, he told me Saturday.
The jail key has turned another notch for the rest of us this week, too.
"They scared my family, but they didn't intimidate me," he said. "I'm not going to run. I was here first. My wife said we should move out. It's not safe. But I'm not going to let them run us off."
Our neighborhood had its problems, but in the last couple of years it has turned around.
It's come a long way. We don't want it to turn back.
Eddie won't let it.
http://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories/local/1025404081.shtml
Darrell
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
More columns by Darrell Smith
Post or read comments in our online forums
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
June 30, 2002
Eddie's my neighbor in the neighborhood we call home. He works hard to get his business off the ground, has a beautiful wife and children who love him.
He also has a problem -- really, all of us in our neighborhood do.
It's the thug who beat him Wednesday night with the butt end of a gun in the doorway of his home.
Eddie Flores still has the bruised lump on his forehead and the anger inside to prove it.
We have a pretty good idea who did this. We hope the police do, too, but for now, there are just questions. Starting with one.
Why?
Eddie thinks he knows. Two weeks before, he and his kids went to get ice cream from the push-cart vendor across the street.
A group of guys trying to make time with some neighborhood girls drove down the street once, then a second time.
A look was all it took.
"What sparked it all was we looked at them, and they looked at us," Eddie said.
To the thugs, it was the wrong look.
About 10:30 p.m. Wednesday night, at least one of them came back to settle the imagined score.
It started with a knock on the door. Eddie thought it was our neighbor across the street.
It wasn't.
"When I opened the door, I was hit over the head with the gun. Then I heard a shot," he said. His attacker fired a shot in the air.
Eddie had just gotten out of the shower and was in his skivvies, so he shielded himself with the door. He swears that if he was fully clothed and had opened the door wider, he would have been shot.
His wife called 911 and rounded up the kids. Someone was beating on the windows, and Eddie heard the same thing over and over.
"You're gonna die. You wanna get shot?"
The police came within minutes, checked out the street, talked to some folks, took their reports. We hope they're on the case.
But right now, that doesn't help him. His wife and kids stay with friends at night now.
Eddie sleeps in the middle room now. There are not as many windows there.
He's a prisoner in his own home, he told me Saturday.
The jail key has turned another notch for the rest of us this week, too.
"They scared my family, but they didn't intimidate me," he said. "I'm not going to run. I was here first. My wife said we should move out. It's not safe. But I'm not going to let them run us off."
Our neighborhood had its problems, but in the last couple of years it has turned around.
It's come a long way. We don't want it to turn back.
Eddie won't let it.
http://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories/local/1025404081.shtml
Darrell
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878