lockdown *updated*

Excitement around here today!
We woke to the news that a "person of interest" was running from police just a few miles from our house. The suspect is charged with a drive-by shooting early Tuesday morning in Madison, IL that resulted in the death of a twelve year old boy sitting in front of his tv doing his homework.
Apparently police were keeping tabs on a home in Wentzville (next city over from us) overnight where they believed this "person of interest" to be hiding, when a vehicle left the house. The police tried to stop it, the car ran and then the person abandoned the vehicle and ran on foot into some woods. Then a second vehicle was stolen, broke through a police checkpoint, led chase, crashed, and once again the suspect was running on foot. This was all before we woke this morning. Now they're still looking for him hours later.
They have police checkpoints on all the major roads surrounding and north of us and most of the schools called off classes before students arrived this morning; many others are on lock down. Did I mention we have an absurd number of schools in our immediate area?!

Anyway, our elementary school wasn't called off (although I'm wondering why, considering almost every other one around us is) (and our bible study at church was canceled for this morning) but they of course were advising everyone stay indoors with doors locked and garage doors closed. No one wanted their kids at the bus stop or even on the buses (when it drove by it was completely empty), and our neighbor offered to take all the kids over in her van. We are about 2 miles from the school. Just as we were going out to load booster seats into her van, and discussing whether or not we should bother sending them to school, another neighbor came out and said he heard a report of the suspect sighted at an intersection that is exactly (I measured it on a map just now) .8 of a mile from our school. At that same time suddenly there were three helicopters overhead. Well that was that.

We continued to mingle outside in my driveway, the little kids fascinated by all the helicopters and all of the school kids complaining about not wanting to miss school (they have great prizes for perfect attendance), and us adults wondering what was going on now, making calls to people, checking the internet for news updates. Then another neighbor came out and said it had just taken her husband 40 minutes to get from the middle school to home (normally less than 10 minutes away) and he saw a police helicopter land in the lawn at the retirement center at the end of our street. Um, yeah, I think we should all head inside now!

I still haven't heard anything new on the news. I can still hear helicoptors overhead.
Savannah's across the street playing with K in her house and Sawyer's mad at me because of course he was all riled up with the big boys outside and now he's remembered I promised him we could play outside today since he was "grounded" yesterday. I'm nervous now to go out in the garage and prep the garage sale because I remember yesterday Savannah was playing with the back outside garage door and I never checked last night to make sure it was locked. The door to the house is locked, but I just can't bring myself to open it. What if someone's hiding in my garage? Hmm... paranoid much?!

It's crazy that this is happening right here in our suburban neighborhood... and considering this murder/shooting this guy is charged with happened almost 36 hours ago, 40 miles away, on the other side of a major city, two major rivers, and in another state.

*ETA*
They just caught the guy in the last few minutes, just after 10 o'clock... up toward the freeway I think, probably about 3 miles from us. Whew. Glad that's done.
Also, I went out in the garage to toss some recycling and that back door was unlocked! I KNEW IT. I'm just glad the bad guy didn't know it!!