"The Situation"
"Everything Happens For A Reason"
What the...?
This is a joke right?This is not a joke…
Oh please god, oh please.
This is the documentation of the quickest emotional reaction in the history of my mind.
Within 20 seconds I was confused, afraid, and shocked.
This was supposed to another boring Tuesday night at work, just like every other Tuesday. These were the last customers of the night, Mat was closing the door… how can this happen in the little town of Venice! What will my parents do if I died? Will anyone miss me, what about Skyler, this is too much… this can’t be happening. Are they going to hurt me?
On, November 17th, 2009 at around 9:30 PM, two young men dressed in all black, wearing Darth Vader masks, ran into my local TJ Maxx. My work friend, Mat stood in the doorway, waiting for the last two customers I was ringing out to leave. Glancing back at Mat, the two gunmen ran in. At first I thought it was a joke, just friends of Mat playing around. But then one of the men jumped over the rows of carts separating my cash register from the entrance yelling at me and my two other co-workers to get to the ground, holding a gun in his hand. My heart felt like it just stopped beating; I immediately dropped to the ground and hid my face.
After tying all our hands behind our back using zip-ties the man ran out into the store. The three of us were left in fear. Should we try to escape - no. Should we call 911- no stay down. Why did they tie us up, they didn’t even demand any money?- I don’t know. So we waited, for the longest 10 minutes of my life.
We couldn’t hear anything, so my boss decided to grab the telephone on the counter and call the police. Then once again we waited.
Sometime during all this waiting, Mat crawled over to us. I could see he was just as upset as the rest of us. I looked back again at Mat, and I just prayed that we all made it out of there alive. Mat was texting vigorously on his phone. Probably his parents, I assumed. I would be texting my mom right now if I had the chance.
Where the heck are the police! After some time, my manager decided we should run out the front doors. I didn’t want to. I wanted to just lie there, lie there and wait for someone to save me. But everyone else got up and she grabbed my hand, and we bolted out the front door.
Police were all around, yelling at us to put our hands in the air. Why are you not inside helping us?
The police then escorted us to the laundry mat several hundred feet away from the store. There I saw two of my other co-workers, who apparently ran out the back door when they heard the gun men come in. When they ran out they set off the stockroom alarm. They immediately called the police.
Even though it was a relief to be out of the store, no one knew where the gunmen, or the other four employees and the customers were. I hugged my other co-workers, including Mat, who let me use his phone to call my parents. Someone helped me cut off the zip-ties around my wrist. There were red lines all over my wrists from the struggle of trying to wiggle out of them.
There was so much confusion and questions, the police came in and told us that we needed to fill out incident report forms. I still could not believe this was all happening. The sound of helicopters streamed through the air. Why would they need a helicopter?
After some more time passed they decided to move us into the Taco Bell next door to question us. The walk over there was surreal, a crowd had gathered, there were hundreds of locals in the parking lot. There were police, reporters, and news trucks all around. This can’t be happening.
Just as we were about to enter into the Taco Bell, someone tried grabbing Mat. I was offended that they were singling him from the rest of us. Mat has nothing to do with this I thought. So my mom and I defended him and walked into Taco Bell.
I just want to go home. I want all of this to go away. The rest of the night kind of all blurred together. Detectives came in to question us. Then Halley, one of my other co-workers came in. We bombarded her with questions; asking what was happening. My intern advisor also showed up. She saw me through the window and wanted to talk to me. This later posed to be a bigger problem, since I was an intern for The Herald Tribune, but I’ll get to that later.
By the time I got home, it was after 2:00 AM. I came home with my mom, to find my Dad watching the local news, it was so surreal to see my store was getting so much media attention.
I woke up the next day tired, but I decided to go to school anyways. I had perfect attendance and something as stupid as this was not going to get in the way of my record. Plus, I was excited to tell all my friends the story of the night before. This later I found out was a wrong decision. Since I was an intern at the Herald Tribune, my name was included in the article, this meant that everyone knew who I was, including The Today Show, CNN, and all the other local media.
So even though school was overwhelming, and by the end of the day I had to retell the story too many times to count, I got through it. So after class I drove over to my internship, not thinking that I should probably stay away from the media until this whole “situation” blew over. I told my advisor too many details that should have been kept secret until the police had caught the gunmen.
Afterwards I was excited just to go out with my boyfriend after school, all the attention was overwhelming, and I just wanted to unwind. This was not really an option though, because when I called my Dad I found out that media and reporters have been calling our house the whole day and knocking on our door. This can’t be happening!
So instead we went to the beach, which, anyone from southwest Florida can tell you, is the best place to unwind. After that life went on; people stopped pestering, and I even went to work that weekend. I was glad to have it all behind me, but was still eager for the detectives to catch the gunmen.
Exactly one week later at school, I heard rumors that the gunmen were finally caught. My phone started buzzing from my internship, but I ignored it. All of a sudden I got a call from one of my teachers asking me to come to her classroom. I was confused, but figured it was probably nothing too important. She told me not go to internship today and to call my mom. At that point I realized something must be wrong.
So I quickly called my Mom who told me that authorities had found the gunmen that morning and they were arrested, but she told me not to tell anyone about it. She also told me that it was employees of the store.
This fact really bewildered me, who the heck would rob their own store? But I hung up from her. I told my boyfriend, Skyler, “It was an employee who robbed us, but it must have been someone who no longer works there because I know all the guys at our store, and none of them would ever put us in danger like that!”
During the next class period I could not focus. Who would rob our store? So I pulled out my iPod and searched the Internet hoping to find some answers. The first thing that popped up showed a new article titled “TJ Maxx Hostage Situation leads to arrests.” After clicking the link my heart sank, Mat’s picture was there, along with another recent employee, and someone else I did not know. My hands began to shake.
Mat? My friend Mat? Mat who I trusted? Mat who I almost dated? Mat who I talked to last night? Mat who hugged me right after the incident? Mat who seemed just as afraid of the rest of us? Mat?
My world crashed down around me. How could this be? Someone I thought I knew so well was the accomplice in a robbery.
Although it was his roomates who wore the masks it was Mat who played the victim. I felt so betrayed that he would do that to me, to my coworkers, people who had known him for years! His mom and his brother worked there too. This can’t be happening.
This was by far the worst part of this whole situation. I broke down. I questioned my judgment, I questioned my life. What would have happened if we did start dating? Would this have never happened? I was in despair. After a day this sadness turned to anger. How could he do this to me. What was he thinking?!
Luckily though as time passed I let go of the incident. After some thinking, I realized that everything happens for a reason. I was so lucky that I had such a supportive family and boyfriend. I also realized that it was such a blessing that I never dated Mat, and I thank Skyler for that all the time. For if it wasn’t for Skyler, who knows how traumatic the whole situation would have been if I would have been more than a friend to Mat. I feel lucky that everyone in the situation is now in a better place and for Mat and his two friends, they are curently sitting in a jail cell. Everything happens for a reason.
News reports of the incident:
In this first video there was still little information about the robbery.
This video is the following night, where some of the details were cleared up.
This is a video after the arrests.
Analysis:
All three of these mediums seem to tell a different story. The first, with the images alone, the reader can infer the basic plot of the story, but cannot really decipher the message behind it. When the text is combined with the pictures, many more details that cannot be expressed thorough the images alone, become evident. The text alone, is not as powerful without the images though. They express ideas and emotions that are hard to express through written word, such as the girl crying illustrates how distraught I was after learning the news of Mat. The image alone tells of the emotion, and the words tell why I was feeling the emotion.
I included three different news reports to show how media is constantly changing. The first video contains a lot of inaccurate data and assumptions. This media also gives the reader a different perspective of the situation, since it is not from a personal point of view. They are also powerful in their own way since they can incorporate action and motion in their visuals, but they lack the emotion of the narrative.
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