Good Morning Everyone.
Here's a something that happened to me yesterday that has made me think, and I have the feeling you guys might have some valuable input/insights into what could have gone better.
But first, a little bit of background information. I'm a single airman still living in the barracks, so my personal weapons stay in the armory (not by choice) so I usually don't carry during the week (Of course, when I'm off base during the week, I'm usually in a bar or restaurant and cc isn't legal in Arizona in any establishment that serves.) My girlfriend lives in Tempe, home of ASU. This is a very liberal, very anti-gun college part of town. Almost everyone in her complex is a student at ASU (or recently was).
I went to my girlfriend's apartment for dinner Wednesday night. Once I got there I relaxed, played with the dog (She has a pug, and while I don't really like dogs, I feel bad for this one, it's in a kennel whenever she's in school), and admired my girlfriend while she tried to cook a steak dinner for me. (She's a veg, it was VERY interesting to watch...) Ate dinner, watched a little TV, went to bed. About 0030, maybe 0100 I hear a loud noise and I sit right up in bed, wide awake. To me it sounds like a large caliber pistol being fired. I roll out of bed, grab my knife and check the rest of the apartment. Go back to the bedroon and grab pants, go check apartment again and look through windows. Don't see anything outside but things feel bad. I grab her keys and go out front. (She lives on a second floor apartment, with an open walkway/balcony around each apartment.) I waited in the shadows, and looked around. I didn't see anything so I cleared about fifty feet each way of her apartment and then went back to the shadows. Waited there for about five minutes and then went inside.
Flash foward to Thursday morning. I haven't slept well at all, but I get up and get ready really early (0630), when we walk outside we find police cruisers everywhere and half the front lawn marked off in police tape. When we get around back to the parking lot we see the entire lot taped off as a crime scene. Seems there was a dead body two cars away from my car. I speak to one of the patrolmen and realize I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. (My car ended up being locked in that crime scene until nearly 1800.) So we go back upstairs, get interviewed by a detective, my girlfriend is cleared to go.
The girlfriend goes to class and I sit around her apartment. Play with the dog for a bit and then wander outside. End up having a three hour discussion with the officer on perimeter security outside her apartment. I ended up finding out a couple of interesting things: I was the only person who ID'ed the noise as gunshots and reacted (other then turning on the lights), and almost everyone was talking about how scared they were, this was the third murder in Tempe this year.
My biggest regret is (other then not being armed) is not checking out behind the building. If I had just gone and even looked around the corner I would have seen the body and there may have been a possibility that I could have done something for him.
A1C Lickey
