When you live in the city, you quickly get used to the sound of helicopters, trains, traffic, and sirens. It’s usually pretty easy for me to sleep through this sort of background noise, but everyone once in awhile something bigger will wake you up.
Anne & I used to live on a quiet lumpy brick street in German Village that was hard to drive over 25mph on because the uneven bricks would shake you to death if you went any faster. One night we woke up to the sound of a car going by at what sounded like 90 miles and hour. We looked out the window to see several cop cars zing by at what looked like 90 miles and hour, sirens blaring. They didn’t stop, so we weren’t really concerned. The next morning I read about a high-speed car chase that started somewhere north of downtown and didn’t end until halfway down 71 to Cincinnati. And it mentioned that the chase wound through Downtown and German Village. Pretty weird. Car chases are normally just for movies, right?
Anyway, last night, we woke up to the sound of our baby crying and when checking on him we happened to notice some police lights outside on the corner. I peeked out the window, but couldn’t tell what was going on. I was hoping nothing serious, because while our side of town has a bit of a reputation for crime, we’ve not heard of anything severe happening from our neighbors who have lived here for decades. I went to bed figuring I’d read about it the next morning online.
Turns out it was another car chase, but this time it fatally ended just around the corner from our house. Someone driving a stolen car (from Licking County) got stopped downtown for a traffic violation and decided to run from the cops, driving the wrong way up Spring Street and hitting the median where Spring turns into MLK Jr. Blvd at 90 miles an hour, throwing them into a tree. Pretty tragic, but at least they didn’t hit anyone else in the process. I took a look at the tree today. It wasn’t a very big one, but it held. If it were any smaller, the car would have plowed through the front of someone’s house. I’m really surprised the noise didn’t wake us up. Perhaps it woke up Desi, which is why he started crying to begin with.
So yeah. We have a new car chase story for our new house. Sort of weird. I normally don’t like to share sad news like this, as the local media glamorizes it too much to begin with, but I thought it was just too strange to overlook this time.