I want to tell a story--upsetting for us--but with a positive outcome.
Let me set the stage. We live at the end of a somewhat secluded, dead end street, that is not far from the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. The woman who called police in the early morning hours to report gunshots--that turned out to be the ones that killed UNC Student Body President Eve Carson--lives in our neighborhood. Eve Carson was abducted from her dwelling in the early morning hours of March 5, 2008 , driven around to get money from ATM's, and then driven to a neighborhood adjoining ours where she was executed and her body dumped.
Not long after midnight last night--actually about 12:30 am--our doorbell rang. Both my husband and I were still up--absorbing the news of Comey's firing--although I was getting ready to go to bed. It rang again. Our dog started barking. We both headed to the door--with no intention of opening it--but turned on our outside walk/porch/driveway lights. When the lights went on, there was an African-American man standing in our yard and he started calling to us, wanting to know if we could tell him where a particular street was (yes, I knew the street and he was miles away from it). My husband, who is a psychiatrist, decided to open the door despite my numerous requests for him not to do so. I held the dog. My husband did not know the street in question, but he went into "shrink" mode and told the man he needed to leave our property and go back toward the main street (Franklin Street) where he could find someone to help with directions. He resisted getting involved in any conversation with the man.
We did not come to the door with a weapon and the man never showed any signs of having a weapon. He never made any attempt to enter our house or ask to come in. In fact, he requested us not to let the dog out.
The man left after a few minutes and I immediately called 911. We both thought he was disoriented and clearly confused. We do have a street in the neighborhood that has a name similar to the one he was asking directions to, but he would have had to walk by it to get to our street. We live on a very dark, quiet, out of the way street that is not where you'd want to be asking for directions!
I reported the story to the 911 operator and asked her to request a Chapel Hill PD car to come and drive the neighborhood to look for the man. He was on foot--no car--and about 20 minutes later the phone rang. It was an officer and he had found the man and wanted to know my side of the story. He was particularly concerned about whether the man had tried to get in to our house (no) and I told him that my husband was a psychiatrist and that in our opinion the officer probably needed to put on his social worker hat and see if he could help the man.
I don't know what happened after that. I do know that when the dog started barking about 10 minutes later my husband and I both freaked out. Presumably, the officer got the man some help.
It is North Carolina. I called 911 because I feared the man might ring another doorbell and someone would come to the door with a gun. On the other hand, I didn't want my husband to open the door, because who knew if there were other people out there and whether this man--or others--might have weapons and have sinister motives? It's very hard to know what to do--and what to trust--in a situation like that. I think I would have reacted the same way regardless of skin color of the man. It is just a very freaky and unsettling experience to have someone ring your doorbell at 12:30 am.
Thankfully, no one was hurt last night. And when it started pouring down rain around 2 am (I was still awake) I hoped the man who rang our doorbell was helped by the police officer and out of the rain.
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