You Shall Not Pass!
November 23rd, 2007
Okay.. so.. John and I went to the movies this afternoon. We saw Beowulf. It was a good film, but took great liberties with the story. Afterwards we had dinner at Outback.
We had just walked up to our building when we heard some screams for help. We had the front door open, as we looked around for the source of the calls. It was the screams of a woman, “Help!” A man on the sidewalk on our side of the street was yelling back, “Where are you?!” as we could not see any signs around the street as to who could have been calling for help. “Help! I’m in the building!” Was the reply. At this point a very broad-shouldered man bolted from the building across the street from us and ran at top speed across the street… right for us. People on the other side of the street called to us, “Look out!” and we promptly shut the door to our building. Though… we were now stuck on the OUTside of the building, with this crazed man trying to get IN. It was at this point that I noticed the blood on his hands.
It came as quite a shock to both John and me that the man was able to break into our “secured entrance” building simply by pulling hard on the door. At this point John calls 911. I check through the windows to see if I can see where the guy went, and observe him rolling on his back under the lobby counter by our mailboxes. A few moments pass, with John repeating our address over and over again to the rather inept DC emergency call service, and then the guy runs out of our building. John screams into the phone that the man was fleeing the scene. That’s when the man grabbed John and started pulling him. Another resident of our building and I jumped on the man and pulled him off of John. We attempted to calm him down, and to keep him from reaching into his pockets. As soon as he heard the sirens he tried to run back into our building again. I managed to pin him against the wall at one point, but he was desperate. He pushed back, and tried one last time to get past the three of us. The other resident who was there tackled the man, at which point the police rushed up and handcuffed the man.
He ended up getting blood all over my jacket, and ripped my shirt to pieces (I really liked that shirt too). There were 5 or 6 police cars, an ambulance and a fire truck, all in a chorus of disarray in front of our building. It didn’t appear to me as though there was anyone “in charge” of the situation, which was kind of frustrating because no one seemed particularly interested in the woman we heard screaming for help from the other building. They just seemed confused as to why neither John nor I wished to be taken to the hospital.
After the cop cars had left, and John and I were walking the dogs, we noticed a single car over at the building across the street, with an officer speaking to people in the lobby. That made me feel better; I was glad they had actually heard that part of our story. Wanting to make sure that the man was charged with as much as possible, we went across the street to speak with the officer. Now that things had calmed down he was in a better position to take down our information properly. We were relieved to learn that the woman was not hurt. The blood was apparently his own from trying to beat the woman’s door in… unsuccessfully.
Whatever her doors are made of, I want for our building’s doors.
