A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Grand Prix

**Gannon** · May-29-15, 09:17 PM

I parked in front of Sumas' house, expecting a nice walk over the bridge to free Friday at the Grand Prix for my buddy and me.

We stepped up for a chat beforehand, and heard what we thought was a round of fire crackers a few blocks away. Thought nothing of it. A few of the neighbors looked down the street, too.

Walked a few blocks down Field, then over to the Boulevard, where we saw an oddly-dressed officer with a wee four-wheeler blocking the sidewalk. Considered it a bit odd, since he looked like a DNR officer...wondered why he'd be off the island. He was watching closely back towards Field on the next sidestreet, probably Agnes.

When we got closer, I saw another 4-wheeler at the alleyway...and it took a while to realize its owner was searching through the overgrowth...with his gun drawn. He wasn't happy. They two MORE 'Conservation Officers' another thirty feet down...guns drawn, looking for someone. Something.

WTF?!

It didn't take but a minute to realize we were in the middle of a manhunt. We made sure to put the two houses between us and any potential flying bullets.

At the next corner, there was an impromptu parking lot with a few cool guys attending...and we asked them what action we'd missed. Apparently someone tried to rob the party store/payday loan giant next to Tim Hortons...and there had been two near-simultaneous volleys of automatic weapon fire.

More State Troopers than I'd ever seen in one spot had converged on the store...along with a few Detroit boys-in-blue. The Conservation officers were called in to help the search for the perps.

Holy shit. Talk about your impromptu inter-departmental co-operation! I hope they caught the guys.

I'm guessing nobody was injured or killed, since the crime scene was completely cleared and the joint back open for business when we came back across three hours later. I'm sure an investigation would've taken much longer...

Another day in the city.

**davewindsor** · May-30-15, 01:55 PM

Why was it "funny"?

**FormerEastsider** · May-30-15, 02:27 PM

Good question davewindsor.

**softailrider** · May-30-15, 05:17 PM

I'm sure he didn't mean it was funny in a laughing sense. He probably used the word funny instead of interesting or different or out of the ordinary to describe the incident. But you guys knew that anyway.

**Scottathew** · May-30-15, 06:57 PM

Thanks for sharing the story with us. I hope they found the bad guys. Detroit needs to have a reputation as a place when bad guys end up dead or in jail. We also need to spend tons of money on early intervention.

**canuck** · May-30-15, 07:19 PM

Originally Posted by 48307

Thanks for sharing the story with us. I hope they found the bad guys. Detroit needs to have a reputation as a place when bad guys end up dead or in jail. We also need to spend tons of money on early intervention.

Sounds like sumpin' Clint Eastwood would approve, except maybe the bit about early intervention.

**canuck** · May-30-15, 07:24 PM

I'm happy you and sumas got out of harm's way Gannon!

**Jimaz** · May-30-15, 07:32 PM

Originally Posted by davewindsor

Why was it "funny"?

I'm just guessing that the title of this thread was intended to be a variant of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum [[film).

Peculiar sidenote: the DetroitYES censorbot corrupted the above link not once but twice due to its Yankee Underscore Tango ban. The link had two occurrences of a word ending with "Y" followed by a word beginning with "T."

TinyURL.com to the rescue!

**Scottathew** · May-30-15, 09:17 PM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

Peculiar sidenote: the DetroitYES censorbot corrupted the above link not once but twice due to its Yankee Underscore Tango ban.

Perhaps I'm being dense, but why is that censored?

**Jimaz** · May-30-15, 09:31 PM

Originally Posted by 48307

Perhaps I'm being dense, but why is that censored?

You're not being dense.

It's a long old story of no interest anymore. Yankee Underscore Tango was once an abbreviation for "whitey."

I have no problem with censoring Yankee Underscore Tango from normal text but when it innocently appears by chance within a URL it should be given a pass. The censorbot needs to be corrected.

It's just a technical nuisance. Until it's fixed, TinyURL.com gives us a workaround for this problem.

**Scottathew** · May-30-15, 09:40 PM

Thanks for the explanation! I would not have guessed that

**davewindsor** · May-30-15, 10:45 PM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

I'm just guessing that the title of this thread was intended to be a variant of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum [[film).

Peculiar sidenote: the DetroitYES censorbot corrupted the above link not once but twice due to its Yankee Underscore Tango ban. The link had two occurrences of a word ending with "Y" followed by a word beginning with "T."

TinyURL.com to the rescue!

Yes, I've seen it and I noticed the similar titles, but that was a fictional, musical "comedy". This was real. Just because the titles are similar, I don't understand how this is a "comedy" like that musical. What's so funny about it? What happened sounds quite serious to me.

**Gannon** · May-31-15, 12:57 AM

Wow. You literalists have to read the whole damn definition of a word before going off on your fishing rants.

Let me help you...from dictionary.com...1. providing fun; causing amusement or laughter; amusing; comical: a funny remark; a funny person.

2. attempting to amuse; facetious: Did you really mean that or were you just being funny?

3. warranting suspicion; deceitful; underhanded: We thought there was something funny about those extra charges.

4. Informal. insolent; impertinent: Don't get funny with me, young man!

5. curious; strange; peculiar; odd: Her speech has a funny twang.

The cues are hidden within the third paragraph, where I repeated the word ODD twice. It was all odd...we were not amused to have to consider heading for cover from friendly fire.

That said, it IS humorously funny that someone thought they could get away with a robbery directly across the street from a shit-ton of bored officers of the law. I'm quite sure they were looking to grab a big bag of cash from the payday loan agent...Fridays at the end of a month are paytime for a load of folks, employed or on the dole.

If anyone got shot or worse, I would not call it funny. So far, I've heard nothing that deflates the humor of their ill timing.

The parking lot of the party store and gas station next door were filled with state cop blues and a few Detroit cop cars within a few minutes of the gunshots...and Conservation officers shut down the next two blocks north of the incident. They even had a bird in the sky...I wish we could get some followup by the media...but not unlike the murder within the SuperDuperBowl 'safe zone', I'm sure this is too tender for the Indy race crowd. Too close to their adrenaline party.