Sitting here in the silence of the evening I was interrupted by the firing of a gun in rapid succession. I wasn’t going to even approach the window and look “to see what I could see.” I immediately called 911 and reported what I had heard. What I didn’t hear was any commotion before or after the shots were fired or a squealing tire of a racing car leaving the scene.

I recall years ago in a church service a young woman and friend came up to me before the service started and asked me what she should have done when she suspected she had heard gunshots last night. I and a friend sitting beside me concurred that she should have called police. She replied that she thought they may have been firecrackers. We all don’t get the experience of hearing gunshots and comparing them to firecrackers. There’s no harm in calling first and let the police sort out the aftermath should there be any.

As Church concluded that morning a member of the church discovered the dead body of a man in an alley behind her house. Not the woman who had heard the shots. Had she called, would he have lived? That question is moot now. I was completely baffled when six months later the woman called me one night and said, “John, I’m hearing those shots again.” I contained myself from screaming into the phone, “Call The Police!!!” In that instance, they were firecrackers.

Tonight, I’m fairly certain they were gunshots.