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Home > Blogs > West Chester News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > September > 05 > Entry
Armed standoff leaving more questions than answers
I’ve been thinking about this one a lot since yesterday. How many West Chester Twp. residents expected to hear about a crime in which stray bullets pierced a random house in a neighborhood, and members of West Chester SWAT had to put their skills to use on a suspect who hid himself in a basement?
Township information officer Barbara Wilson put it into perspective. “Nobody’s immune,” she said as we watched police process the scene yesterday. “We’re just more fortunate than most.”
Yesterday’s incident leaves a lot of hanging questions: the homeowner and his son told me they didn’t know Curtis Mitchell, the 21-year-old who parked his car in their driveway moments before 18-year-old Robert Lillard of West Chester Twp. allegedly came around from the back of the house, gun in hand, and demanded Mitchell’s possessions. The homeowners said they didn’t know Lillard, either.
Police are picking through that one, to find the true story of what happened. But there’s another aspect to this story that’s been eating at me since yesterday.
I interviewed a person who lives down the street from where the standoff happened. When the person realized which house were talking about he/she made several comments to me about how the home’s residents played loud music, spent a lot of time “loitering” on the street, and sped up and down the street.
Then the person, who said he/she had never spoken with the residents of the house, asked me if they were white or black. I confirmed they, Lillard and Mitchell are black.
“That’s what lives in that house - I knew it!” said the person, who is white.
That, and the way the person said it, bothered me almost as much as the attempted shooting.
Is racism - closet or overt, it’s just as bad - an issue in the township? I want to hear your thoughts on this - post away.
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