Early Morning Gun Shots In My Duluth Neighborhood, What Is Happening In Our City?

It's something that you hear happening in other parts of our country.  It's unnerving and you're glad that you don't live in that state.  Then, you hear a news story that there are gun shots in your city, that's a bit more shocking and you're glad it's not in your neighborhood.  This time, it WAS in my neighborhood and myself and my neighbors are concerned and left wondering why it happened.

I had just shut off my alarm clock to start the day and sleepily made my way down stairs to make my coffee.  I always put the water in the carafe the night before to eliminate extra noise that might wake my husband up, so I poured it in the coffee maker and started for the bathroom to get ready for work when the I heard the first round of gun shots that stopped me in the hallway in my tracks.  Confused I turned to look in the kitchen because it was very loud and sounded like it came from there.  My first thought was that my coffee carafe had blown up and I remember thinking 'that was room temperature water, how could that have happened'.  Then, I heard the second round of gun shots and knew exactly what it was and again it was very loud, like just outside my home.

As I was running back up the stairs to get my husband my mind was racing, was it gun shots or was it firecrackers?  It had to be, had to be firecrackers, right?  My husband and I passed each other on the stairs, me running up to get him, he running down yelling "I heard it too, I heard it too".  We both knew, it wasn't firecrackers and didn't know what we were going to be dealing with in the next few minutes.  We peered out our windows into the darkness, but saw nothing.  I begged him not to go outside because he's one of those guys that likes to "investigate" strange sounds, but I think he was rattled because he told me he was NOT going anywhere.  Then, the texts from my some of my neighbors started, "had we heard that", "what direction did it come from" "were we ok".

It was decided that we would all call the police to insure they would come check it out.  They did and as we watched from the window we saw one of the officers pick something up from the ground and put it in a plastic bag.  We couldn't be certain, but assumed that it was the gun shells.  I didn't find out until later that one of our neighbors had gotten to her window in time to see a car coming from the area of the shots immediately after she heard them.  She made note of the vehicle and that information was also relayed to the police department during her 911 call.

What is happening in our city?  It's not a pinpoint area either, it's all over our city, unfortunately the uncertain violence has found it's way into our neighborhood too close for comfort.  The daunting thing is, it happened in the direction I drive for work.  I could have easily been driving past when this person(s) was there ready to shoot.  Anything could have happened.  I walked around for the next couple of days feeling violated, scared and realized that I was stupid for thinking our small quiet neighborhood was immune to actions like this.  But, we all do....until it happens.

For now, we wait and wonder.  Because it's an active investigation we aren't able to get much information about the incident. But it's proof that it can happen in any neighborhood in our city.  What did we learn?  Be aware, connect with your neighbors to be watchful and make sure that you have each other's phone numbers in case you need to call or text each other in case of an emergency.