A LONG night

Last night was one of the longest nights I have had in as long as I can remember. Around 1:15 something woke me up. I laid in bed for a minute trying to get oriented and figure out why I was awake. Then I heard 3 LOUD popping/booming sounds-the third of which lit up our living room (I can see the living room from my bed). My heart started racing and I was frozen, I couldn't even move or say something to wake Steve up. I laid there for a few minutes and just as my heart started to get back to a normal rhythm I heard two more-this time it woke Steve up. I turned to him and asked "WHAT was THAT???" My heart was racing again. He was disoriented and didn't really hear the sounds. Then all of a sudden there was one more loud boom-the loudest of all. To me, it sounded like gun shots or something. Steve thought it sounded like dynamite-either way, it wasn't a normal sound for 1:00am.

We laid there for a few more seconds and then decided we needed to do something. I went to check on the girls to make sure they were ok and Steve looked out the window of our bedroom. When I went into the girls room I could tell there were flashing police lights outside (I could see the red and blue through the blinds) along South Temple-Steve had already gone back to bed. I went and got him and we came and looked down off our balcony to see police cars everywhere, a few fire trucks, hoards of people gathering, cops taping off the whole intersection, and right in the middle of it all-up on the sidewalk-a car on fire. WOAH!!!! The loud popping sounds must have been tires blowing out, or the gas tank exploding, or a combination of lots of things exploding on the car. Everyone seemed relatively calm so we watched the firemen put out the fire and gawked for a little while longer, coming up with theories of what could have happened, and then headed back to bed.

After I finally dozed back off from all the adrenaline Emma started crying. It wastill kinda loud outside (it was about 3:00 am by this point) so I decided to make her a bottle to help her fall back to sleep. After I got her calmed back down I decided to see why they were still out there-I assumed they would have towed the car away by now. I peeked through the blinds to see them using the jaws of life on the car and someone coming over with a stretcher with white plastic on it. It had been almost 3 hours by this point since the crash so I figured there couldn't still be someone inside, maybe they were just trying to gather some evidence. All of a sudden some one starts tugging really hard inside the car and I saw what they were doing-someone WAS still in the car. HOW SAD!!!! If I had realized what they were doing I wouldn't have kept watching-weak stomach-but they lifted up a white sheet from the street giving me a perfect view of the burned body-HORRIFYING!!!

I immediately turned and headed back to bed, but by this point sleep was VERY far away! I couldn't get that image out of my head. I felt so sad for that person, what an agonizing death, I felt sad for their family who would never see their loved one again-you name it, I thought it! Finally arond 5:30 I dozed back off.

This morning I turned on the news to see if they had any details...apparently there were 2 men that died-they were involved in a hit-and-run a few blocks away and were fleeing the scene at freeway speeds and ran right into the brick wall down on the street level. The officer on the news said they died instantly, I hope that is true because I can't think of a worse death than burning. How sad that they made the decision to flee the cops and it ended up costing them their lives. I have a new respect for emergency response teams after seeing them in action-what an emotional, heartbreaking job, but they do it because it needs to be done.

What a LONG night that I never want to experience again!