The High-Speed Chase
It was a quiet, lazy Wednesday afternoon and Anna and I had just started on our way to my Mom’s house in West Bloomington from where we live in East Bloomington. Mom was behind us as we had picked her up at the train station at the Mall and then dropped her off at her car. The plan was to work on things for her upcoming garage sale and just have a nice afternoon. Little did we know the excitement was about to begin…
As I was coming up on Normandale Avenue from the East there was a HUGE backup of cars. Being familiar with the area I decided to cut down to a side street and take a back way home. I had just called Mom to tell her how to avoid the traffic when we started hearing the sirens. I think Mom counted a total of 13 squad cars that went racing past her before it seemed the show was over. We couldn’t figure out what was going on but speculated that one of the gas stations on the corner of Old Shakopee and Normandale was being robbed. Boy were we wrong…
Just as I was lazily making my way along Auto Club Road (about the sleepiest road in Bloomington, if not the whole Metro area) I thought to call Cedric to see if he could figure out online what was going on. I had just picked up the phone to call Cedric when I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw a gaggle of police cars (or is it a flock of cars?). Anyway, panic set in as it does for any red-blooded American when you see flashing lights in your rear window. This time, however, I realized that there was a car they were all chasing and it was just about on my bumper when I figured out just what was going on. Well, being in the left of the two lanes and having the chase vehicles all fanned out to the right of me I had no other options but to cross the oncoming lanes of traffic and stop along the curb on the other side of the road. Thankfully, as I mentioned before, the road was one of the sleepiest in Bloomington and so I wasn’t in any danger of hitting oncoming traffic. Still, my heart was beating pretty hard by the time the whole chase blew past me and I realized what danger Anna and I could have been in.
By the time we finally got to Mom’s house I had talked to Cedric who helped to calm me down somewhat and Mom and I could reflect on what had just happened. As it turned out the guy made a break for it and was caught just at 169 and Anderson Lakes Pkwy, just near my Mom’s house. I was glad to have gotten out of the way as we learned later that he was also armed. To read the story from KARE 11 news just click here.
