This article was published in the Southerner’s winter newsmagazine.

I witnessed a police shooting of an unarmed man. My memory of this still lies vivid in my head and varies greatly from any news article or police report that was published regarding this shooting of 41-year-old Hector Aguilar.

“A drug suspect was in satisfactory condition today after St. Paul police chased him into a south Minneapolis neighborhood,” said an article published in the Star Tribune on October 11, 2007. “…St. Paul police officer shot and wounded him after the man shot at the officer and his police dog, hitting the animal.” From my account this is not what happened. I will try to depict my memory of this event to the best of my ability.

I got in my mom’s car after soccer practice, tired from physical activity and drained from day to day stress. For some reason that day in particular, I was in my own bubble and I wouldn’t let anything pop that personal space I was creating for my self.

A white SUV with a trailer dragging behind it drove in front of our silver Prius concealing my view of most of the road as we rounded every curve on Minnehaha park way. The roar of an old engine came towards us and soon after I could hear the sirens. An old white pick-up truck abruptly rounded the corner, the entire reddish black road was now completely visible to me as the SUV in front of us was hit and crashed to the side.

After the car in front of me was hit, I watched as the tires that had been in the back of the pick-up truck bounce toward my windshield turned movie screen. A man got out of the smoking car and started running, using the car I was in as leverage as he put his hand on the hood and pushed off down the street. Suddenly, several cop cars and large guns surrounded our car. I watched out the window on my right side as my eyes chased the path that a German Shepherd was following. I saw the short man still running down the street.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” my mom exclaimed. As the dog approached closer the man turned around to face it with his hands in the air. The dog jumped as the man kept his open palms in the air. As this was happening I watched a lone cop raise his two-foot long gun in the air and aim at the suspect.

“Zoë put your head down!” my mom cried. I sighed as the shots began and lay my head in my lap while my mom draped herself over me and cried on my back. “Oh my God, oh my God,” she repeated. I felt her chin rise to look out the window. The first shot echoed as I listened for a second. The second shot came, then a third.

Suddenly my moms panicked voice yelled “Zoë look now!” I picked my head up to re-associate myself to the scene of chaos that surrounded me. My view zeroed in on the man still standing with his hands in the air trying to keep the dog from biting his face as it jumped on his chest. The gun shots almost became background noise along with my moms cries as I absorbed every detail.

Although I didn’t feel scared, I remember feeling my hand grip the car door. The white pick-up sat feet from my car with its open back facing us, the SUV was still to the side on the curb, the trailer dangling behind at an angle. I could see about three cop cars in my right peripheral where the cop with the large gun had emerged from as well as a few to my left. I stared at the defenseless man, waiting for him to fall to the ground as the shots continued. I glanced over to look at my mom as she had one hand gripping the steering wheel and the other covering her mouth, “Oh my God, oh my God…”

The cop continued to shoot as he moved towards the unarmed suspect. Later my mom explained that she wanted me to see what was happening to ensure that she was really watching police open fire in a residential neighborhood at a man who posed no immediate threat to the life or well-being of any officer or passerby.

I looked toward my mom to judge the intensity of the situation. I didn’t have much adrenaline; I didn’t have much fear. At that time in my life the only thing that seemed realistic to fear was losing people close to me. The risk of this happening was alive and present everyday. Because of this I became numb to everything else around me.

After the officer continued to step closer and open fire at the body between the empty hands that remained in the air above his head, the suspect turned around to run again.

When the suspect ran into the alley, the shooting stopped. He had been shot in the hand and butt. “Can we go now?” I asked my flustered mom impatiently. “We probably have to stay because we’re witnesses,” she responded. Irritated, I slumped down in my seat and folded my arms.

We pulled up to an officer who stood towards the alley as him and his partners high-fived each other, “We got em!” one exclaimed. My mom rolled down her window to a grinning police officer and looked at him with her red damp eyes and her right hand resting over her heart. “Hi,” she said, “do you need us to stay?” she asked. The cop looked at her, and bent down slightly to look at me, “what did you see?” he asked. My mom’s eyes swelled as she responed with enthusiasm, thinking that our wealth of information might be a huge help for police reports and news stories, “We saw everything, we were the car driving right behind that SUV.” The cop paused, “No I think you can go.” “You don’t need us to stay for any questioning or anything?” she was surprised. “No.”

That night my mom and I watched the news report on WCCO. The news team interviewed the main witness who was inside his house four houses down during the time of the shooting.

Before I went to sleep my mom hugged me letting me know how glad she was that it wasn’t us that got hit in our small car, or that a bullet didn’t bounce off something and hit us. I felt like it was just another day but there was something alarming about the fact that I had no reaction to an event that a lot of people would find scary or even traumatizing.

The article published the following day in the Star Tribune featured a witness who only saw the aftermath of the shots fired, “Travis Martin, who lives in the area, said he was talking on the phone when he heard sirens and saw a pickup driving on Chicago Avenue. Martin looked away but soon heard screeching tires and a loud crash… ‘It sounded like eight or nine gunshots,’ he said. He hurried to the scene and saw someone on the ground being tended by officers, Martin said.”

My mom and I read and watched all of the news reports together. I remember the silence that filled the room. My mom couldn’t believe they had sent us away.

We obtained a copy of the police report which stated that Aguilar had shot at the officers, hitting their dog in the paw, so the return fire was only necessary. The report also stated that Aguilar, who lay shot on the ground, had a gun next to him that he had dropped. This gun must have been planted. All I saw were empty hands surrendered in the air, how could he have been holding a gun?

It wasn’t until a few days later that I experienced any type of emotional reaction. I kept analyzing my lack of concern and ‘nothing happened,’ attitude until I realized that something really did happen. My heart started beating fast, my adrenal glands pumped panic through my body, and more than anything extreme mistrust and new found fear sparked in me of the power and control behind the flashing lights, the blue uniforms and the belts accompanied by guns and handcuffs.

I’ve seen what I believe to be the good and evil of that power. There’s comfort in knowing that if you are ever in danger, help is a phone call away. However, there’s also something unsettling about giving someone who’s just as human as you and me the power to charge, imprison, injure and even kill.