Pre-story: we live in a VERY nice, quiet neighborhood. The kind you could leave your doors unlocked, car unlocked and running, and let your kids play in the street after dark. It’s a wealthy neighborhood, and we have considered gating our community in our HOA meetings to be even more secure. We moved here in October because our previous home had the door kicked in and our German Shepherd attacked the man and he lost a lot of blood in our foyer, but to our dismay was never found. My husband and I had to move with a new baby because I no longer felt safe, and my husband agreed. (That area also was nice, but not as upscale as where we currently are).

This morning I was getting ready at 5 am. And being a military family and sport-shooters ourselves, I heard gunfire. I immediately threw open my bathroom door and ran to my daughters room at the front of the house panicked that she was screaming and crying (at this point I was so disoriented I had absolutely no idea where it was coming from, whether we were being hit, she was hurt, anything. My fight/flight response was fight to my daughters cries). My husband had already beat me there and was laying on top of her in the floor and I looked out the window to see 3 men opening fire on the home DIRECTLY across the street from us. They quickly jumped in the car and drove away. I immediately called the police and we told them everything we saw. They believed this to be an isolated incident, but I am beyond terrified.

The questions running through my head were “we are one house number off, what if they mistakenly shot ours?” “Our daughters room is the immediate one facing the street if they had chosen ours” “What if we were sitting in our cars about to leave for work and they noticed witnesses and decide to take care of us to keep our mouths shut”? I very obviously am traumatized, but not because of myself, but because we have lost one child already and that could have been us. While this is an amazing neighborhood (seriously, it’s so crazy this actually happened HERE) I told my husband to list our house today. There is NOTHING that can make me place value on a home or location over my child’s life. He agrees 100%, but after talking with our families, they think we are crazy. If we can afford it, is it really that crazy? After speaking with police, apparently the man across the street (we don’t know him well) is a business man, who also got tied up in some bad stuff and owed people money. He has two children, and the argument I had was if he clearly doesn’t care enough for his children, why would he have regard for mine across the street (pregnant with number 3, one living daughter, and one deceased son). If he is messed up in so much stuff his kids are at risk, who knows if he would ever testify on our behalf’s if he’s at the other end and we are the victims. I’m rambling, but because I’m so panicked. That could have been my family. My house. My baby. My cars. So we are listing today.

On a positive note, mine and my husbands family reaction time for a disaster was impeccable. You can practice and practice and practice for these things but when you throw adrenaline in, it’s a completely different playing field. My suggestion to ALL parents would be to go over with your spouse and children your safety plans. For fire, disasters, emergencies, even an intruder. We go over all of these as a couple once a month (daughter is too young) because you just can’t be too prepared. As a tactical family with formal training, we are the type of people who do not wait for police. Police have a delay. YOU are your family’s first line of defense. You hope and pray it never happens, but most would rather be prepared than unprepared to avoid further accidents. Tell your children how to escape a fire, what you want them to do if there is an intruder (if you are proactive like us, you don’t want to “clear” a house and accidentally harm your child), what to do if mommy or daddy are hurt and need help, who to call, who to trust. Unfortunately our situation today didn’t give us much of a “defensive” stance to fight back or flee, but we were able to take cover and hide and I am so very proud of our reaction. If anyone has ANY questions on what to do in a “what if” situation, please let me know. As I said, we have formal training and prepare ourselves and others for cases like this, but NEVER believed we would actually see it in place.