Reasons Why I Might Be Moving to the Suburbs Sooner Than Expected

Here is a fun story, fortunately I wasn’t home for this encounter so I’m relaying it to you as told to me by my roommate:

While lying in bed he hears the doorknob rattling then a banging on the door. He goes downstairs to investigate and a woman, who by appearances seems to be homeless and/or a drug addict (possibly inaccurate, but sometimes you can judge a book by its cover), sees him through the stained glass window and starts pounding on the door. The following conversation ensues*:

Crazed Woman: Open the door!
Aaron: No.
CW: I’m being chased, let me in.
Aaron: I’m not opening the door.
CW: Can you give me an old pair of tennis shoes or something?
Aaron: I’m not doing that.
CW: Call the cops.
Aaron: Gladly (already on the phone with them)

Once it had been established the cops had been called she left and tried to open the doors of all the other houses on our block. A few minutes later he heard sirens and poked his head out of the door and saw 2 ambulances and paramedics attending to someone two blocks north of our house.

If the ambulances were not on the scene for the same woman then it was an amazing coincidence so I’m going to assume it was her. And if it was her there are really only two scenarios I can envision in which she would need an ambulance.

1. She was hit by a car crossing O’Donnell Street (which, for you people not familiar with Baltimore, is a two lane street but one of the more heavily traffic roads through the neighborhood).

2. She really was being chased and whoever was chasing her caught her and accomplished there goal.

Obviously this is all speculation (I couldn’t find a story about it on any local websites) either way though it makes me pretty uncomfortable for numerous reasons. You never want to see any sort of crime your neighborhood, nor do you ever want to see someone injured or killed in a tragic accident. I also find it to be a little upsetting that we live in a society so untrusting, and a city with so much crime, that when a woman seems to be in peril you can’t actually believe her enough to help. I would have done the exact same thing in my roommate’s situation. My first thought would not have been this person clearly needs help. I would have immediately thought this is some kind of scheme to get me to unlock the door so I can be bum rushed by 5 guys in the alley and have all of my stuff stolen. That seems wrong, but that’s the way it is around here. Especially considering some friends opened their door a few months ago to find a woman with a couple of bullets in her head.

Baltimore has a certain reputation for safety (or lack thereof) around the country. It’s probably a deserved reputation considering there were over 230 murders last year; and that represents a significant decrease in the murder rate. The statistics are a little deceiving though. If you look at this map you’ll notice that the murders are fairly segregated to the north and west portions of the city. If you live anywhere in the vicinity of the harbor you’re generally safe. There weren’t even many robberies or burglaries. But it seems like lately criminals have been getting wise to the fact that there is less of a police presence and no police cameras, and if you’re planning on killing someone you have a better chance of not being witnessed if you drive 10 minutes south and do it there. Two incidents hardly make a pattern but if this rate picks up it’s going to expedite my migration to the suburbs. Especially if my mom reads this post.


*I’m paraphrasing obviously, I wasn’t there.