Standoff in Trussville

It all started at 3:30 yesterday afternoon, Laura was going home and there were cop cars blocking her road she thought it was a fender bender so when the cop motioned for her to turn around she was like no. Well the cop continued on about his business and he went to his trunk and pulled out a huge gun and then Laura looked around and noticed cops running and hiding behind bushes and mailboxes. She started freakin out and then turned around.

She went to the end of the road and called me and Pres and started talking to other neighbors about what was going on...she figured out that cops had been called to the guy's house and when they got there he started shooting at them which started the standoff. She ended up parking on the road behind her house and walked to their house.

A few hours later Laura called me back and was like there has been 8 or 9 shots been fired since the last time I called you. She said they saw a older white man in his undershirt and boxers covered with blood come to the front door and start shooting. Me and Erik were going to eat and then we were going to try to get over there. They told us the road was blocked but we were going to try anyway.

We ended up parking behind their house also and walked across the yards to their house. They were all piled up in the playroom with the binoculars and video camera with the lights out watching. This is the view we had...

Anyway, Pres showed us a video he had just shot where the guy turned off the flood lights of the house, opened the front door, and started shooting! It was freaky!

So we sat there until about 11:00 with no excitement except the swat guys running across the road and diving under the trees so me and Erik decided we were going to leave. We get back to the car and there is a big SWAT van in front of Erik's jeep with guys in full getup piling out of the van so we thought something may be fixin to happen so we ran back over to their house. Here is as good of a pic I could get without using my flash of the SWAT van...

A little after midnight nothing had still happened except for the cop coming over the intercom telling the guy to pick up the phone or flash a light letting them know he was ok so we left again.

This morning at 8:30 Laura called me back and said it was still going on and they had heard 1 shot. She called me again at 9:30 and said there had been 3 more shots and it was over cause police were goin in and out of the house. So I got ready real quick and went over there so I could see some more action. Pres called me and told me to try to go the real way to their house so he could maybe move their cars back so when i got there media vans were going down the road and I just followed them into their road and came on up. Pres went and moved their cars over and in the meantime told a reporter that he had some good video from the shooting the night before.

A little bit later the Bham news guy comes and gets the raw footage and is trying to put it on www.al.com now but he called later and said he can't get it into the right format to put online.

Me and Laura wanted to get in on the action so we drove down the end of the road while Pres was getting ready for work to see what was going on...the roads were completely blocked with crime scene tape! Well, Laura had a MD appt at 1:30 and when she asked if we could get out by then they said no. So Pres couldn't go to work either. So we went back to staking out the house


and hanging out with Kennedy



I guess they really didn't want us gettin out cause they sent a cop up the cul-d-sac to block us in!

Oh and we had heard from Pres & Erik's sister that the guy inside had killed himself somewhere between midnight and 2:00am during the night so we were kinda waiting to see them bring his body out....I know we're morbid. But it paid off we got to see them bring out the body...I have tons of pics of this but due to the graphic nature I'm only going to post one...turn away now if you don't wanna see...

So they finally got the scene clear and undid the tape so we could get out and Pres went to get Laura some meds (she has a nasty infection going on) and then I came on home. Yeah we kinda had fun with this whole event but its really sad. This guy was a nurse and dad and husband. He apparently had some mental issues and the wife was teh one who called teh police to go and check on him after he threatened suicide. And this didn't happen in Ensley or somewhere like that this happened in a really nice neighborhood in Trussville...I mean some of the homes here are in the 700 thousand price range...it just goes to show it can happen anywhere.