Another day another deranged shooter in East Hollywood.
This time I found out from the LAPD themselves, not an alert popping up on my phone. It seems a knucklehead barricaded himself in an apartment in the SRO next to my building. So after my workout when I was at my most sweaty and slimy the Cops won’t let anyone on the block.
“It’s an active shooter situation,” the Cop says.
“When will it be over,” I asked.
“It will be over when it’s over. No more questions. Go that way,” he pointed down toward K-Town. I was in no mood to argue with the guy about needing a shower, especially with the SWAT team staging what looked like a raid behind him so off I went to the Local to wait out.
There is no place better to wait out an active shooter than at the Local. Jack the Albino behind the bar and our three Russian gun nut pals agreed and thus we waited drinking and trying to figure out what sort of rifle does one use to hold off the LAPD in an East Hollywood SRO when A Line and Man Bun came in with their dog complaining about the Tear Gas in the air.
They had never been in the Local but it was the closest clean well lit place to go. Man Bun gripped his dog tightly.
“Those Cops poisoned my dog! She’s choking,” he cried while A Line tried to remain composed as she called her Mother.
“Oh my Gawd can you believe it Mother? Gun violence is finally here. In East Hollywood! I’ll never be safe again.”
The refused all drinks and water for their dog from Jack the Albino while they waited with the rest of us for the all clear go back to your homes to sound out.
While walking outside to catch a whiff of the CS gas wafting up Beverly towards Silver Lake because hey wouldn’t Hunter S. Thompson do the same thing, I overheard two cops talking and was able to piece together the events of the day in my corner of East Hollywood. It seems the LAPD had been looking for this Guy in the SRO for three weeks because he shot at and hit his soon to be ex wife and her new boy toy outside a movie theater near the Miracle Mile.
Although no status had been offered vis a vie the condition of the boy toy and soon to be ex it appears that the LAPD takes attempted divorce by public shooting very seriously. Therefore they tracked said knucklehead to the SRO next to my apartment and surrounded the place. They only evacuated the block when he pulled out a gun and shot the door frame. SWAT had been called and had occupied an apartment with a clear line of sight into the domicile now being used as a bunker. Negotiations were continuing but had been pushed into overdrive by the emergence of a mirror, a credit card, some white powder and what appeared to be a rolled up $20. Hence the Tear Gas.
Two hours later the neighborhood was given the all clear to return to their homes sans the SRO residents who would have to wait until the LA CSI unit finished their work. It seems our knucklehead had brandished a weapon and fired in the VERY general direction of SWAT team member who in turn gave him Suicide by SWAT which was over 6 hours in the making.
I walked back to my joint with great determination and relief. I stunk so much I was beginning to offend myself and a shower would surely be a welcome relief for everyone in a three mile radius. I walked up the stairs and found the apartment SWAT had occupied during the siege was mine. It was also readily apparent from various marking in the dust on my fire escape that the fatal shots had been fired from three feet outside my kitchen thus allowing the stench of gun powder and involuntary death to permeate and hang over everything in my home.
I walked outside, down the stairs and into the street in an attempt to get away from legal side of the crime scene where I found a righteously indignant almost to the point of being WASP’s from Greenwich, Connecticut A Line and Man Bun arguing with a plain clothed member of the LAPD demanding reparations for their inconvenience and now poisoned dog who in true Chihuahua fashion was biting at the LAPD plain clothes cop.
This was the last bit of weirdness I could stand. It was time to go to the same desert where Phil Kaufman took Gram Parson’s corpse and burned it.
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