Domestic violence in our hallway

We had quite a night last night, hopefully we will not have another one like it ever again. We were awakened at 3:00 in the morning by someone repeatedly buzzing our door intercom. This has happened in the past, so I didn't think much of it and tried to go back to sleep but then we heard what sounded like someone trying to pound down our door. I jumped out of bed and found smoke seeping in around the door and the fire alarm set off. We woke the kids up put blankets over their head and put wet cloths by our mouths and ran out into the cold. We had several fire trucks and police cars pull up and we ended up waiting it out in the building across the parking lot. The story is that the boyfriend of the woman who lives across the hall from us is a major loser and I guess he had planned to come and assault her. He was pushing every buzzer hoping someone would let him in, and eventually one of our neighbors did, not realizing who he was. The Police think he was using the fire extinguisher to beat in her door and it ended up going off which is where all the "smoke" came from. (I always assumed that they had some kind of water in them not chemicals and dust.) He never got to the woman but he did bust off her door handle with the extinguisher and the fireman had to use an ax on the dead bolt to get her out. When all was said and done the entire hallway in our building was covered in a yellow powder, and our apartment as well. We were given the go ahead to come back in around four and at that point we stayed up vacuuming and wiping everything down. I spent most of today cleaning up the hallway of our building vacuuming, and wiping down floor and walls. It was so gross there was this film on everything and it took several wipes to get it off. I am still finding it settled on things you wouldn't think to check, and I am sure will take a few weeks of cleaning to get rid of it completely.

We are so grateful that no one was hurt and that we all got out safely and none of our things were ruined. We are praying that they find the guy and get him custody so he can't come back. Weston has been rather shaken up and has wanted to go over and over what happened and we have had some precious teaching moments about choices and consequences and forgiveness. The saddest part was when we had to throw away the ginger bread house that he and I made a few days ago. He was so excited about it and had been eating one piece of it each day, but it was covered in the yellow dust and had to go. He put his little head down on the table and cried. I felt so bad.

This whole incident could have been avoided if our friends the Olson's could have stayed in school one year longer. We sure miss you guys, for many reasons! We are very happy that we are on the home stretch of living in these Apts, and are counting down, about 4 1/2 months!