Case Review: Near Miss

*** What follows is a guest post by Chedderman.  It is presented as a Near Miss.  That is to say... its a recounting of an actual event that could've gone very very badly but did not.  It is extremely important to share these experiences so that we may learn from them.  And... as he points out... it buts up nicely with Will's post on situational awareness. ***



I have had a strange feeling as of late, that the Almighty was about to give me a wake-up call. You see, my Christian life has kind of been in the crapper for a while. It is funny that I asked Him to take it easy on me with this one, as some of them have been hard life lessons. Anyways, I woke up late on a Sunday morning having skipped church for about the 4th month in a row.

I needed to make a call to see if I could work on my recoil buffer today. I could not find my cell phone and figured I may have left it in my truck last night. I went outside to my truck that is parked on the street. By the way, I live in an urban blue collar neighborhood that has seen better days. It was a really good neighborhood at one time, until the “vibrants” starting to move into the section 8 apartment complex the next street over.

As I was looking in my truck for the cell phone, I heard some shouting outside a house a few doors down on the other side of the street. I looked over, and could tell something was wrong by the expression on two of the peoples’ faces. I closed my truck door and started walking over there, I figured an adult presence was needed. A woman came running out of the house, yelling “call 911.” There was an African American youth chasing her, and she ran into a neighbors’ house. He did not follow her into the house, and stood in the front yard of the house where the woman had sought refuge for a few seconds, then ran into the back yard of the house where I initially heard the shouting.

I looked over at the house where the shouting had occurred. It looked like two people were being threatened/held against their will by a white kid and two African Americans in the area in between the house and a minivan sitting in the driveway. I thought it was odd that they had bandanas around their necks. As I walked over there, the white kid and the two black kids ran into the back yard and pushed their way through a gap in the fence, and disappeared. The cops showed up about 2 minutes after the lady ran into the neighbors’ house and had called 911 on her cell phone. A decent response time, but not good enough to save you in an active shooting situation.

I did not know if at the time, but I walked into the middle of a botched home invasion. What had happened was 3 african americans and 2 white trash youths invaded the home down the street. Three of them had guns. The bandanas were to cover their faces. They were looking for money, the old man who owned the house had died last Saturday. They must have figured that the old man had some money, and they could get their hands on it. When the lady ran out of the house over to the neighbors, their plan started to unravel. Two more people, a newlywed couple, were trying to bolt from the house, but the thugs ran after them and trapped them between the house and the van. The remaining thugs were trying to force the young couple back into the house. Me walking over there unnerved the thugs enough that they decided to run away.

In retrospect, what I did could have got me killed. I guess the Almighty had my 6 and my 12 today. Thank you Lord! My CCW pistol was by my bedside, in a box, unloaded and never fired. I have not followed through on my CCW application, although I took the class. My Remington 870 12 gauge bird/skeet gun was in the closet next to a couple of boxes of buckshot, the 12 gauge barrel was unattached to the frame. If it were my house that was invaded, I would have been caught completely off guard. I am not sure If I will continue to live there, my roommate has a “God will protect me, I don’t need to have a gun” attitude. Let this be a lesson to all of you out there in terms of situational awareness.

Epilogue: The home owner knew the two white trash kids, they were supposed to do some house work for her. The thugs are all probably in custody as I write.