Last night I laid in bed and watched the 11 o'clock news. As anyone in this area knows, the big story right now is Bucky Phillips, the man who escaped from an Erie County, N.Y., prison five months ago. If you're not familiar with the story, you can read it here.
Even this weekend, as we were out in Marblehead, Ohio, I saw the Bucky story on the Cleveland news stations. I read about it in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. This is quite the story, and it took an awful turn late last week when two New York troopers were shot during a search for Phillips. One of the troopers died this weekend. This is in addition to a trooper who was shot in June while approaching a car believed to have been driven by the elusive Phillips.
And all of this is a bit too close to home. A lot of the searching for Bucky has gone on in Chautauqua County, N.Y. Two of my siblings live there. A car, believed to have been stolen by Phillips, was found in Warren, Pa., a little south of where my parents live. The search for Phillips has extended into Erie County, Pa., where I live and work. Yesterday the Cleveland stations were saying the search was even going to Ashtabula County, Ohio, just across the border.
The bottom line is that this is all so close and all evidence so far leads us to believe this man is dangerous.
Call it the mama bear in me, but I found myself last night watching the TV and thinking about what I would do if I heard a window broken in my house. How quickly could I get to Autumn and grab her? How can I protect her at all costs? Should we get out of the house or lock ourselves in a bedroom? If we left the house, where would we go, running around in our pajamas in the middle of the night? Could I get to the alarm panel on the security system before an intruder got in my house? Am I brave enough to handle something like this?
I just hope Keith and I never have to find out the answers to those questions.