Earlier this month, residents of a west Flagstaff neighborhood were ordered to shelter in place as Flagstaff police exchanged fire with a man accused of domestic violence over the course of two hours.
He was eventually taken into custody but the ordeal ended with the crash of an Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter, killing both on board.
KNAU’s Adrian Skabelund spoke with several residents of the neighborhood about what they experienced as the chaotic scene was unfolding outside of their doors:
Gina Nabours: My name is Gina Neighbors. My daughter's bedroom is street-facing, and so my partner was in there putting her to bed, and then he came in, and he turns to talk to our daughter, and he said, "You know, you're going to be fine. You're just going to sleep there tonight."
And I was really confused as to why he was putting her on the couch.
And then he looks at me, and he goes, "Those were gunshots." And both of us were so confused.
So it was the three of us and the dog in the bedroom, and we were all just laying on the floor.
It was crazy because we would hear the flash bombs go off, and I had no clue what was happening.
It would be like, “Okay, like, we must be okay now," and then all of a sudden, we'd hear the “bam, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba!” And I looked at my partner, and I was like, “What is going on? I don't even understand this.”
Adrian Skabelund: I mean, were you able to get to sleep that night?
GN: I think my body ... You're obviously not a parent. I think that my body just kind of crashed. It was like, "Oh, my gosh, we have to get to bed so that we can wake up and function in the morning."
Our daughter, she was pretty calm.
She was most worried about being tired at school the next day and felt like it was really inconsiderate, that this was just taking so long.
Greg McLean: My name's Greg McLean. Been in this neighborhood for 20 years. It's a wonderful neighborhood with lots of families, and we've got our little park down the road.
So yeah, it's been really nice.
I don't think most people who live in a suburban neighborhood in most parts of our country are used to hearing that many shots all at once, you know? So then I'm just like, "Eh, I ain't trying to mess around and catch a stray," so I came inside.
Yeah, I mean, my house has a lot of windows, which I learned that night.
And so I was trying to sort of peek out, but I've got a family. I [have] two kids. I wasn't trying to do anything stupid, you know?
My daughter's nine, and so the morning after, I was taking her to school, and of course, the nature of schools and neighborhoods, I knew that she was going to have these conversations to some extent.
And there was, of course, the cops and the crime scene tape and all this kind of stuff.
So I led into it very gently. She's just like, "What do you think's going on? Why are the roads blocked?" And I was like, "Uh, it looks like there was a crime of some kind. It looks like something happened," and so I kept it very vague.
Thania Ramirez: My name is Thania Ramirez. So I went upstairs to go wake up my husband. I was like, "Hey, something's going down." So we went to go check on the babies.
I have three kids, 11, 5, and 3. And that's when everything went crazy. Like, my husband was like, "Nope." He grabbed his gun, sat in the recliner, tried to hush the, the puppy, 'cause he kept barking and growling. Just in case, you know.
I wasn't scared. I wasn't scared. I was actually, I was more scared of my babies waking up. Because trust me, if you're a mom, you know if you wake up, the kids wake up, they're going to be up for a couple hours. They're not going to go back to bed.
AS: So your kids didn't wake up the whole time?
TR: No, they didn't. Because we are loud in this family, straight up. Like, I used to live in Buckeye, in La Puente, and you get used to stuff like that.
We felt the thump in the house. Like, we felt the house shaking for like a couple of seconds. But we didn't know it was the helicopter until the next day.
I feel so bad because cops and everything are risking their lives to save our lives, you know?
And sometimes I do have my doubts when it comes to cops, especially with social media, [but] this is one of the goods. You know, they were protecting us. They were protecting our babies, and I feel so bad for those-- the heroes.
They're heroes to us.
