One night, he was having a birthday party with lots of kids and noise and music. The circle was a great place for parties. Benjamin and Trey went to bed, but I stayed up late, as usual.
Suddenly, I noticed red and blue flashing lights outside our den window. I went upstairs and it was chaos. The circle was filled with 3 or 4 police cars. There were people standing outside the party house being interviewed by the police.
Then I saw Michelle (Dustin's mother) come out of her house and I crossed between the police cars to see if she knew what was going on. She told me that apparently someone had been stabbed at the birthday party. That was a shocker! In our neighborhood? Impossible. A couple of minutes later, Ryan's mother also came out, as well as Mark and Michelle's. A cop came over to us and asked us to go home and that someone would come by to interview each one of us, so we did.
When the police came to talk to me, I couldn't tell them much at all, just that I had seen the lights. The cop told me that apparently, a gang member from Denver was being initiated and his task was to find a nice suburban event and to stab someone. Well, he succeeded. The victim was a friend of the kid having the party. He was taken away in an ambulance while we were standing in the street. He was okay after being in the hospital a few days, thank God. They had not yet caught the suspect and everyone was told to stay inside with the doors locked. After a few hours, the police left and everything calmed down. There was no way I was sleeping that night.
I sat downstairs in the den reading and trying to calm my nerves, when the dogs (my 3 big Afghan Hounds) started to bark. Of course, that scared me, so I let them outside in the back and then ran upstairs to look out our bedroom window which looked out over our yard and the yard next door.
In the back of the neighbor's yard, I could see a shadow lying by the fence. I went downstairs and called 911 and prayed that this kid would not be stupid enough to climb into our yard. The dogs had nice, deep barks so I felt relatively safe. I told the dispatcher that the suspect was in the yard next to mine, and within a couple of minutes, I saw flashing lights. At that point, the kid climbed the fence into the street and ran again. They eventually found him hiding under a bush in Michelle and Terry's front yard. He was pretty banged up from climbing the fence and falling, but they got him. By this time, it was almost daylight.
That morning, the incident was on all 3 of the Denver news channels. As Trey and Benjamin were sitting at the kitchen table watching the new, Trey said "Wait! Is that our house? What is this???"
I took great pleasure in recounting the entire incident, the cops, ambulance, sirens, chase, and stabbing, and how both Trey and Benjamin slept through the entire thing and showing them the bloodstains on the street.
Not only that, not one of the males in the entire circle woke up. Believe me, they took a lot of ribbing after that.