Our first shooting!

So I (Brandon) was taking the garbage out after a Sunday dinner, when I saw our cat-lady-without-a-cat neighbor came running into the complex (it was more of a quick waddle), completely out of breath. I asked her if everything was OK, and I faintly understood the words, "Shooting." So I went outside where I found another neighbor looking on, who confirmed that she heard 4 gun shots and that it never happens on this street -- usually on the one just a block over or down from ours, which didn't comfort me much, but in LA I guess one street over means a lot (the photo is about 6 houses down from ours -- by this time, crowds of people were gathering outside and walking to the scene).

I ran inside to tell Lyndsey, but she was in the b-room. So I thought, how often do you get to see this kind of stuff? So I casually walked down to the crime scene just when cops arrived.

The scene looked like an SUV had crashed into the back of a parked car and the unloaded some heat on the green Toyota truck in the photo (middle of the road). No one was hurt -- oddly enough, no one was even there. The only owner of the 3 vehicles was the poor guy whose parked car got completely smashed. I walked back home and Lyndsey was outside chatting it up with our neighbors -- one of whom is a bald, Emo-Neo-Nazi type guy that could have roid-rage at any moment.

So we're guessing the owners of the truck and SUV were gang bangers and had it out in the middle of the street. One girl looking on said to me, "I heard a few shots and told everyone 'HIT THE DECK!" Her friend, who I guess just moved here kept saying, "You don't see this back home! Time for me to move back." I replied, "Welcome to LA," and she said, "Yeah....this is a goodbye welcome," in a distinctly urban-slang voice. She was a little too dramatic for me. Oh, by the way, an LAPD helicopter was circling the perimeter this whole time, searching for any suspects on foot.

So the po-po shut down our street. We decided to escape for a few hours and take a walk in Beverly Hills -- as a sidenote, we are looking to move before September and today's event has only confirmed our decision.