Tales from the Trenches

My husband is an insurance claims adjuster for a huge company and he occasionally brings home stories that he or one of his coworkers has dealt with during the course of their day. He doesn’t do it often because his area of specialty is bodily injury claims from car accidents. And as much as I try to support him and be interested in what he does, I don’t really have any desire to hear about how many people get hurt every single day. And I’ve made this fact abundantly clear over the last 6 years that he’s been doing this. Having a mother who barely survived a car accident has pretty much put me at saturation when it comes to hearing about vehicle accidents of any kind.

But today, he brought home a story from one of his coworkers that works in the property department and it’s a doozy to be sure. Apparently a man caught a burglar in the house and decided to take action instead of hiding in the closet with his cordless phone waiting for the cops to arrive. So he immobilized the intruder with his own gun and kept him at gunpoint face down on the floor. At which point the cops arrived and shot him. Three times. In the back. And then one more time in the leg. They then proceeded to drag him out onto the porch while they handcuffed the, you know, actual criminal. Then they called the paramedics while the homeowner was laying on his own porch bleeding to death. Oh yeah, and his wife and children were watching the whole thing as well.

As he was relating this story to me over dinner tonight, my mouth was hanging open and I kept expecting him to give me the punch line. But it just kept getting worse! I cannot even imagine how angry this entire family must be, let alone the deep betrayal they must feel. But mostly I was thinking how very, very much I hope they sue the hell out of that police department and I hope that the cops who shot this father and husband have to face him every single day in court.