The Night My Doorbell Camera Captured a Shooting
The 36-second video changed my perspective on home surveillance
At first, I wondered briefly if the popping sounds we heard outside were fireworks. K, my boyfriend, looked over at me. It wasn’t late — maybe 9 or 10 o’clock on a Saturday night in February. Our one-year-old was asleep upstairs, and we were standing in the hallway, getting ready to retreat to different rooms. The latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy was waiting for me on Hulu; he had video games to play in his man cave.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
Before I could respond, we heard people screaming. For a moment, we didn’t move, and then K darted around me and up the stairs to our daughter’s bedroom, which faces the front of the house. I was close behind him. He snatched her out of the crib and handed her to me. I immediately went into my office, closed the door and sat on the floor away from the windows, soothing our now crying toddler.
Once she quieted down, I strained my ears to listen. The popping sounds had stopped, but I could still hear faint voices outside. The walls of our three-level home in the suburbs felt penetrable now in a way they hadn’t before.
My boyfriend returned a few moments later. “You can come out,” he said. “Whatever happened is…
