Never seen that many police in one spot - twice
Ted Escobar The Royal Register Editor
I’ve been around law enforcement a lot because of my work. I wasn’t doing business Saturday, but I encountered more police than ever before.
I was in Spokane from about 10:30-1:30 to visit the Apple Store with my son Teddy to deal with a computer breakdown earlier in the week.
The problems were resolved in about half an hour, the Apple people were the nicest and the fixes didn’t cost nearly what I thought they would.
Merrily, Teddy and I stopped at a Wendy’s drive-up for lunch for his family and both of us. Right after we ordered, there was a pop-pop-pop sound you couldn’t mistake. Teddy and I looked forward quickly to see cops across the street involved in a shooting at a gas station.
Stop, I said. Don’t move any closer. You don’t know which way the bullets are going to fly.
“It’s over,” Teddy said. “The guy they were after is down.”
In short order, there was a convention of cop cars and cops at the Cenex Station where Ruby angles off from Division.
We learned later that the man who was shot was in his 20s or 30s. The incident started on Division St., then spilled over to the service station.
According to police, people reported the man was acting erratically, walking in and out of Division, trying to get into cars while brandishing a knife..
Officers confronted the man at the Cenex station directly across Division from where we were. We noticed only when the firing started. Authorities said two officers fired shots after the suspect started to charge at them with the knife.
Officials said the suspect was speaking before he was transported to a hospital in critical condition.
Teddy and I drove on to his place, I had lunch with his family and headed back to Granger. I was at the computer when the neighbor lady called at about 10:30 p.m.
“A man the police are chasing just ran between your house and ours,” she said.
I was still on the phone as I told Pat to quickly lock the doors. She did and then asked: “What’s going on?”
I don’t know, but Alba says there are cops outside chasing someone.
Pat and I went to the kitchen to look out the window. There were flashlights, car lights and cops everywhere south of the house.
We looked west. Same thing. Then we looked north through bedroom windows. Parked along the freeway, which runs right by our house, it seemed there were half a dozen cruisers, all with lights flashing.
Pat and I went to the middle of the house in case a shooting broke out. I called the sheriff’s office to ask why there were so many cops on our property.
The dispatcher didn’t know, other than a pursuit was in progress. She said it was initiated by the State Patrol after a motorist they were trying to stop bolted.
I called the State Patrol. We won’t be able to go to sleep knowing there is a dangerous person in our yard, I said. The dispatcher nicely agreed to call me at the end of the incident.
Another WSP person called about 15 minutes later and said the man was in custody. We went to sleep at about 11:30.
Dreams of violence and cop chases are scary enough. Real incidents are scarier.
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