Axe Cop – Chop

When I got home tonight, after working late today, Anne told me, “You left too early this morning. You missed all of the excitement.” According to news reports and neighbor’s eyewitness accounts at 7:30 this morning three young black men were burglarizing a home on the next block over, when a police officer pulled up to the house. KMOV posted a security camera photo of one of the individuals. The following is a summary of the subsequent events according to the KMOV news report:

According to police, the officer spotted a man walking out of the house carrying a safe. Police said that the man fled on foot. The officer said the other two suspects also fled, one escaped on foot, while the other got inside a white Subaru station wagon and drove away. According to police, another officer spotted the Subaru on a nearby street before the Subaru slowly reversed and stopped. Police said the officer thought the suspect was surrendering, so he got out of the patrol car. However, authorities said the suspect then drove towards the officer, missed him, but hit the driver’s side of the police car. The suspect then led police on a chase, but officers stopped chasing him because they deemed traffic conditions to be too dangerous to public safety for further pursuit.

I was already at work while all of this was transpiring, but Anne was still home. She first became aware of these events, when our next-door neighbor called her to warn her that he had just seen two men run down our driveway and into our backyard. Party Girl, the young women who lives behind us saw them scale the fence between our properties and then run down her driveway and into her street. From news reports it sounds like all three suspects are still at large. Our neighbor who works from home saw the police later in the day attempting to track the suspects with a bloodhound.

Several weeks ago, during our annual block party, a police captain showed up to do some community relations. I spoke with him and one of the messages that he was trying to get out to the public was that there was a gang of criminals that were burglarizing homes in the area. They would wait in their car until a homeowner left for work and then break in to the house. There are enough similarities between the officer’s story and today’s events to make me think that these are the same guys. At the block party he said that one eyewitness had thought of taking a picture, but didn’t. Now they have a photo.