By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
Our retired life had a moment of frantic activity this afternoon.
It involved a stolen vehicle and a seemingly endless line of police cruisers in hot pursuit. It played out, if only briefly, along our normally quiet street in Princeton, Texas.
It is good, therefore, to offer a word of thanks and gratitude that it didn’t end up tragically.
Someone had stolen an ambulance in Dallas and, thus, launched a lengthy high-speed chase through Dallas and Collin counties. The ambulance — with its motor vehicle thief at the wheel — drove north along U.S. 75, then turned west on U.S. 380. It bore down on Princeton.
We heard the sirens. And then the helicopter. I stuck my head out the door and noticed the ‘copter was hovering over us.
Then I looked east along our street and watched an ambulance make a high-speed turn and head west along our street. It zoomed past our front yard. Right behind it came the cops. Lights flashing and sirens blaring. They ripped along our street at a speed I could not calculate; I’ll just say they were exceeding the posted 30 mph speed limit … by a whole lot!
I am guessing about a dozen cruisers roared along our peaceful street.
Later, I learned they caught the dimwit in McKinney, near the airport.
As I have tried to process what we witnessed this afternoon, I find myself transfixed by a couple of realities. One is that our particular street in Princeton often is bustling with children. They play in their front yards; they ride their bikes; they toss balls around, often into the street. And ours wasn’t the only residential neighborhood to undergo this moment of fright.
The other is that our street runs adjacent to an elementary school, which at the time of the chase was still in session, meaning that the grounds might have been filled with youngsters.
Therefore, we avoided a serious tragedy. How in the world that happened is beyond me. I won’t spend another moment worrying about what might have been. I will give thanks that the incident ended without injury … or worse.