Gunfight at the Motel

Monday, April 26, 2004: So last night was pretty exciting…I went to bed around 10 or 11pm at my motel. Around 2am I wake up to a car alarm going off outside. It’s the kind of car alarm that just honks the horn over and over. After about 10 honks, it stops. A few minutes later, it starts up again. I peek out the window to confirm that it’s not my own car alarm and I see that it belongs to some green SUV. It’s pretty loud and it’s probably waking up the entire motel cause I can hear people walking around upstairs. So this SUV alarm goes on and on for several minutes. I think it was about 5 minutes total. I almost thought about hitting the alarm button on my own keychain to add to the confusion but decided against that.

Then I hear random yelling outside. Apparently one guy is really pissed off about the noise and he starts beating the hell out of this SUV. I’m thinking, “Yes! Live entertainment!” and I’m trying to figure out how to open my window so I can listen to the action. Before I can get the window open, I hear guys yelling at each other, running around and I can hear punches outside my door while some lady is shreiking. (I guess cause her boyfriend/husband is getting beat up.)

I’m guessing it’s a pretty good fight because I can hear all this scuffling right outside my door but I can’t see them from my window. I don’t want to open my door since it’s right there and I still can’t get my window open to hear better. Around this time is where I start hearing gunshots. Wow, a gunfight! But then I hear a guy screaming, “ALBANY POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND!” A second later, 3 more gunshots and another, “ALBANY POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND!” This repeats about 5 times for a total of about 15 gunshots. Apparently the guy they’re yelling at actually gets away. I dig through my backpack for my police scanner only to find out that I’ve left it in the car. Damn! I finally get my window open a few inches so I can listen to things. It’s like listening to a live episode of COPS – a trailer trash-sounding woman tells the tale while a monotone cop asks really obvious, pointless questions to her.

I sit at the window for awhile and listen to her story. I can’t see either of them but I think they were a few doors away from me. I see the motel room door in front of the SUV is open which is where the pissed off guy came from, I think. The lady telling the story gives his room number and it’s pretty temping to get on my cell phone and call that room to try and arrange a drug deal or something. That would’ve added a little fun to the chaos outside. But I decide against that too. After maybe 45 minutes I get bored with the whole thing and I lay back down, leaving my window open. Then at 3pm, things get exciting again! I hear yelling by a guy again and then, “ALBANY POLICE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!” This repeats over and over for a few seconds along with, “DON’T MOVE OR I WILL HIT YOU!” I guess he means he’s going to shoot him. I hear the guy run past my window and several officers chasing after him, probably with drawn guns. This time they manage to catch him. Right now I’m still lying in bed, listening to the cops interview motel guests. It’s 3:30am and I guess it’s kind of over. This kind of thing makes staying at a crappy motel worth it. You just can’t get this kind of live entertainment at a Best Western Hotel. I can’t wait to read the newspaper’s version of this story tomorrow.

UPDATE: I got a paper and read the story. Most of what the lady told the cop was left out of the story. It turns out that the cops shot this guy with a bean bag gun, then the guy attacked the cop and ripped off his badge and THEN he actually got away from them. I don’t know exactly what a bean bag gun is but they sure don’t sound very effective. The caught the guy when he returned to the hotel about an hour later.