There's a standoff in front of my house right now

There's a standoff in front of my house right now. The crazy part is the news agencies know almost nothing about it. Usually FOX, NBC, CBS, etc. are chomping at the bit to talk about something like this...especially in "Happy Valley" (the Utah Valley that I live in).

The only news agency to say anything about it is KUTV channel 2. Their story is all of five sentences long. BOOORRRINNNGG.

I'll give you my viewpoint. I came back from getting my hair cut and stopped off to gas up (and put oil in) my car at the Chevron station at 5th West and 8th North. As I approached the intersection, I could see two cop cars with lights on, blocking the road and the cops directing traffic back east on 800N. So, I, coming north on 500W, turned onto 8th N and quickly into the gas station to gas up. While buying oil for my old rig, the two nice girls working the cash registers told me about the situation.

Evidently, a little earlier, a white blazer had blown by on 5th north. The police must have been chasing him, because they set out spikes that stopped him cold at the hospital. However, when told to get out of the car, the man pulled a gun and threatened to shoot himself or others while putting the gun to his head.

The kind girls at Chevron were hoping that the action would move down one block in front of them so they could see it all unfold.

KUTV reports only

Police tell 2News that a man pulled out a gun while sitting inside his car in the hospital parking lot. ...Officials have tried to talk the man out of the car, but he will not give in."

That's very undescriptive, but could fit with the eyewitness accounts I heard earlier.

I gassed up about 2:30pm, and it had already been going on for some time. I'm writing this at 5:55pm MDT, and the SWAT team still hasn't done much.

The eerie part was when I came to work. I drove out 940N because that street runs right by the hospital and I wanted to see how badly it was blocked off. It wasn't. There were cops at every intersection, but they had 940N (the street on the south side of the hospital) still open, even though the West entrance to the hospital was closed, and that's only 100yds or so from 940N. As I drove east, I passed all the south parking lots, and a couple other cop cars. I was the only car on the road moving east. It was eerily quiet. On other streets around Provo the noise is normal. Lots of cars moving to and fro. However, in this little 1 block radius around the hospital it was dead quiet. No words, no cars, no birds, nothing.

I couldn't help think of what would happen should I catch a stray bullet. A truly fragile mortality does wonders for your respect for life. Perhaps that's the real reason I felt compelled to write about this event. Our life is so tạm thời. We must use every minute, every giây phút to the utmost, giving back to our fellow human beings, so that when we stand before our maker, the Almighty, we can look Him in the eye and say "I did not waste my time. I made a difference for my fellow beings."