So I Live Next to an Ax Murderer

A few days ago, my beloved and gorgeous and vivacious and beautiful, intelligent, witty, and weird friend Anna called to tell me that someone on my street had been arrested for taping up his wife with duct tape, threatening her with an ax, and then chopping up random things around their house in an attempt to show her how serious he was. The wife managed to call 911, but got disconnected somehow, and then the son got through again after his dad sent him to go get a gun. Apparently the guy is in jail right now and they have removed several guns from the house. Not really a funny story at all, but here's what kills me about the whole thing.

We have a "Neighborhood Watch." I've lived in neighborhoods with this system before, and I've never really seen much except for the signs saying the neighborhood was involved in it. Not this neighborhood. This neighborhood has meetings, we have phone lists, and an organized phone tree for emergencies.

From time to time, we'll get calls on our organized phone tree to let us know that so-and-so had his mail stolen or somebody's welcome mat disappeared from their front porch. I think a few times someone has reported a lost dog, and maybe even someone had a pie stolen off of their kitchen windowsill once. These are the things that have warranted mass hysteria and every single household on the street was notified about it.

But I have to get a phone call from a friend whose husband's dad's coworkers notified him that some wacko had moved in for the winter and tried to pull a "Here's Johnny" on his wife in broad daylight.

I wonder what the lady who called to report a stolen pie thinks about that?