This morning Jim, Sherri, Gracie and I went walking in the mansion neighborhood. It was fun to look at those big houses. When we walked back across the bridge that spans Mission Blvd. I saw a path leading down to a sidewalk that hugs the side of Mt Rubidoux and goes along Mission Blvd. It leads down the the parking lot and dog park on the west side of Mt. Rubidoux. Jim and Gracie were tired so they went back to the car and Sherri and I went down the sidewalk.
When we were about halfway to the bottom we passed by a homeless guy sleeping right there next to the sidewalk. Sherri and I both jumped. We didn't see him until we were right close to him. Man, my chest felt like someone kicked me. We continued on chatting about that little bit of excitement. Then after that was met up with two gang banger types. One of them was holding a lizard he had caught. He was walking along holding a lizard by the neck! Another weird moment.
When we got to the bottom we poked around and explored the parking lot area for a while. There's a ruin of a manmade waterfall at one side of the parking lot. There's a nice old structure that looked like it had been a drinking fountain. We wondered what that area had been used for. It seemed like a lot of cost and effort had gone into making that one part of the parking lot special. All this work had been done in the early 30's. Anyway, it was pretty interesting. After a while we started back up the walk.
A white car pulled in and a guy got out. He fuddled around in his car a bit and then started walking towards us. Sherri and I didn't like the looks of this guy. He was acting fidgety and squirrely and he was looking at us. He started coming up the walk behind us! Just then, Jim pulled up. He had gotten bored waiting for us and decided to see where the sidewalk led to. We talked to him a little bit and then he drove off to turn the car around. The weirdo was still walking toward us. Since we were on this sidewalk on the side of a mountain there was no place to get away from this guy, We stepped aside and let him pass. He was even weirder up close.
We decided to get down off the sidewalk and leave with Jim. When we started walking down the guy turned around and followed us. Pretty creepy. We got his license plate number and left.
As we were driving back to Sherri's car she said she thought he looked a lot like the composite sketch of this guy who murdered a woman in a her home a few days ago. We called 911 and described the guy and told them were he had been and gave the dispatcher his license number. Then we drove back over to the parking lot to see if he was still there and to wait for the police. The guy was still there. He had put on a pair of rollerblades and was skating off on another sidewalk that went under the big bridge to Rubidoux. We were able to get a better look at what he was wearing.
The cops never came. When we got home we looked at the picture in the paper and DANG! It looks just like him! If that composite sketch is at all accurate then this really could be the guy. Sherri's going to call the detective who's working on the case and talk to him. I'll see her tonight at band practice and get the latest.
Either it's the murderer, or we just ratted out a guy who only wanted to go for a skate.
1 comment:
I guess they have to prioritize their calls. I'll bet if I had told the dispatcher we were going back they would have sent someone. I don't think they like citizens taking things Into their own hands.
Sherri talked to the detective on the case and he told her there had been another call on that guy from the same area. That's pretty interesting that someone else thought he looked like the composite sketch.
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