This is my other letsnotmeet situation, which occurred when my son was four years old. This time, I am 100% sure that my kid prevented something horrible from happening to me. It turned into an episode of Law & Order, with a terrifying ending.

By way of background, I live in Milwaukee, which has the honor of being the most racially segregated city in the country. It's a cool city overall, but we have a really shitty inner city with a ton of poverty and violence and gang activity. At the time this happened, I was living in a sort of in-between area; not the ghetto, but not a super nice area, either.

I was a 22 year old single mom. I lived in a ground floor apartment on one of the main streets. I parked in the back alley behind the building. My front door faced the street and I had a side door too, with a walk running between my building and the one next door.

I got home in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday with my kid. As we drove down the alley to get to my parking spot, I saw a guy in a hoodie sort of lurking around by my parking spot. It was weird because it was warm outside and he had his hood up, but there were a bunch of gangster wannabe kids in the neighborhood, so whatever. It was definitely an odd place to just be standing, though. As I got close to the building and started pulling into my parking spot, he turned around and started walking toward the street, past my side door. He definitely left because I arrived; I figured he was smoking a blunt or something.

I didn't think anything of it, and I got my son and some bags out of the car. I went the same way the guy had just taken, to my side door. I didn't see him at all. My son and I went inside, and I was in the process of putting stuff down when my doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone, and I immediately thought it was this guy.

Being young and naive, I answered the front door. It was the same guy, still with his hood up. He immediately smiled at me, but not in a super friendly way, more of a leer. He looked to be about 16, cornrows, with a fake gold grille that was studded with little fake diamonds. I regretted opening the door, but here I was, so I went with it.

"Hi."

He kept staring at me and said nothing. At this point, I saw another kid in a hoodie pacing behind him on the sidewalk and looking at us. I was quickly realizing that this was not a good situation.

My son, who I had momentarily forgotten about, came up behind me. He did the shy-kid thing where he stood behind me and poked his head out from behind my butt to look at the guy. Hoodie Dude looked at him for a good couple of seconds, and then back at me.

"Yo, is Danielle around?"

"I don't know who that is. Maybe try the other door." I gestured to the my neighbor's door, to my left.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, sorry."

And he left, walking in the opposite direction of my neighbor's door. Hoodie Dude #2 followed him. I thought it was really weird that they didn't even try to check next door for "Danielle." I thought the whole thing was really weird. My boyfriend got to my apartment a few minutes later, and I was glad to see him.

He had a really old Jeep that he always parked out front, on the main street. When he went out to get something from his car shortly after he arrived, it was gone. Fuck. Car theft was a pretty common thing in this neighborhood, but stealing it from the main street in broad daylight was pretty ballsy. So we called the cops, filed a report, the whole nine. I told the cop about Hoodie Dudes, since it seemed like it could be important. I was able to give a good description of the guy who came to my door asking for "Danielle." I had no idea if it was relevant, but the fact that the Jeep was stolen shortly after these guys were around seemed pretty relevant.

That's where the story ended, 'til two days later. I got a call from a different cop with the downtown (main) precinct. He told me they had found the Jeep and, other than the ignition, it wasn't damaged. Yay! He asked if I could come downtown to do a lineup, see if I could identify the people who had knocked on my door right before the Jeep got taken. That was weird - a lineup for a stolen car? - but I agreed. He asked if I could come down in a couple of days. Also weird that they wouldn't want me to do it right away, but I was mostly focused on the fact that doing a lineup was pretty fucking cool.

So I go to the downtown precinct a couple of days later. The way this went seemed sort of unorthodox, but it was what it was. Two detectives took me into a dark room, where a woman in her 50s was sitting with a young woman in a wheelchair. The young woman's lower leg was in a giant cast with this whole metal contraption surrounding it, with maybe a dozen metal rods going into the cast itself. At this point, I had no idea wtf was happening.

The detectives instructed us that we weren't to say anything during the lineup, except if we wanted the guys to turn around again or whatever, and that we couldn't talk to each other at ALL. Okay.... We ended up having to wait in the room for almost an hour, in the dark, awkwardly not speaking. They explained it was taking more time than anticipated to get 12 guys from the jail over to the precinct.

Finally, we got started. They did two lineups and gave us forms to mark 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. There was a large window in front of us, and they explained that the guys couldn't see us. They turned the lights on in the room behind that window, and brought each guy in individually.

I couldn't identify anyone in the first lineup. I sort of felt bad, actually, but I couldn't. The second lineup started, and I didn't recognize guys 1, 2, or 3. Number 4 came out, though, and I immediately recognized the dude who had knocked on my door. He didn't have his stupid grille anymore, but it was definitely the guy.

After the second lineup was done, they brought the other two women into the hallway and told me to stay put. After a few minutes, they came back to get me. The detectives asked if I recognized anyone, and I told them I was sure about #4 in the second lineup, but couldn't identify anyone in the first lineup. (I had gathered by this point that Hoodie Dude #2 had likely been in the first lineup, but I hadn't gotten a good look at him when he was pacing on the sidewalk.) They had me sign two forms, one for each lineup, with the second form identifying #4 as Hoodie Dude #1.

When I gave the forms back, the detective told me that they could tell me what was actually going on now that the lineup was done. Good, because I was confused as fuck by this point.

He explained that #4 was indeed one of the guys they arrested with my boyfriend's Jeep. The guys had stolen the Jeep and driven to a nearby part of town, into a quiet and lily-white neighborhood. (I am also white; this is relevant.) They came across a young couple unloading groceries from their car. The young woman with the leg contraption was the female half of that couple. They parked the stolen Jeep behind the couple, got out, and immediately shot them both. They shot the woman in the leg and shot the young man in the dick. He was still in the hospital in bad condition, which was why he wasn't there. The older woman was the girl's mom, and had brought her from the hospital to do the lineup. The reason it was delayed a couple of days was because she had emergency surgery to try to fix the damage to her leg.

The guys didn't demand anything from the couple or take anything from them after the shooting. They just immediately shot them. The young woman managed to remember the license plate number of the Jeep, and they were apprehended in a corner store when a cop saw the stolen car parked outside shortly after the shooting. The shooters were both teenagers, but were being charged as adults.

One of them had stupidly talked a bit before lawyering up, and had told a detective that it was a gang initiation. They had to shoot a white person. That was the price of admission. They had stolen my boyfriend's car after taking the bus out to the street I lived on. They had figured it would be easier to get away if they had wheels. The detectives were pretty sure I had been the original target of opportunity, but couldn't explain why they hadn't gone through with it. Nerves, maybe.

I knew why. It was because he saw my kid peeking out from behind me.

They told me I might have to testify if the case went to court, and told me I'd hear from the DA's office when they needed me. A couple of months later, one of the detectives called me and told me that Hoodie Dudes plead out to attempted murder charges in exchange for reduced time. The guy who got shot in the dick survived. I didn't ask how many years, but I assume they're probably still in prison 13 years later.

As an ironic postscript to the story, my boyfriend had the same Jeep stolen from the same spot in front of my apartment about four months later, also in broad daylight. That time, they didn't find it right away. He was staying over at my house weeks later when he got a call around 2AM from the MPD Arson unit. They torched it and left it in the middle of the street in a notoriously violent area of the city.

I moved after that.

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