Drama on My Friday Commute

[ndrosen]

When the shuttle bus let me out at the Pentagon City Metro station on Friday morning, I saw some people milling around; I started to head for the escalator down into the station, but someone said that a police officer had said not to go down, so I didn’t. I saw a couple of policemen with rifles halfway across the street (it’s a wide street with islands in the middle), and then they came and told us to go inside, so we walked into the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and thence into the Pentagon City shopping mall.

A little later, I saw a squad of armed police officers run through the mall, and down toward the station. I was sucked into conversation for a while by a woman Jehovah’s Witness (the JWs often have a display outside the Metro station, or sometimes down in it). I told her that I had known a Jehovah’s Witness in college, that he had given me a book to read, and that I had not been impressed.

Then it was announced that the police had the suspect in custody, and we could go down and catch our trains, so I arrived at work only twenty minutes or so later than expected.

I’m about to go downstairs to catch the shuttle bus to Pentagon City, and I hope that there won’t be the same kind of excitement today.