Somewhere around 2 weeks ago, an emotiоnally disturbed man was taken into custody; employees and patrons of nearby businesses had to stay inside for an hour. This unpleasant and sad scenes were experienced by us, Tom River’s citizens. It ended peacefully, but will these situations continue to happen? How to act in situations and how to reduce them?
The event
There is a huge chance that if you were out on April 5 that you’ve experienced this unpleasant event. The incident began when Seaside Heights police put out an alert that an emotionally disturbed man might be traveling through Toms River.
One of Toms River’s policeman found the 39-year-old man traveling on Route 37 in a GMC Acadia and activated his emergency lights in an attempt to pull him over, the spokesman Stocco said, but the man would not stop.
Instead, the man continued on Route 37 until he finally pulled into the ShopRite parking lot at the Crossroads Center at the intersection of Route 37 and Route 166, in addition to the ShopRite, there is a Buffalо Wild Wings and a Panera restaurant nearby.
In the parking lot, the man refused to get out of his car and was observed to be in a highly agitated state. The man, who has been recently residing in Seaside Heights, was now parked near the businesses,
The police got afraid that the man had a weapon so for caution the police asked all of the businesses to keep customers and employees inside while police talked to the man.
A witness who was among those locked down at ShopRite told the Patch they saw a few police cars at first. The police maintained a dialogue with the man for more than an hour before taking him into custody. Witnesses told the Patch police used a flash grenade to disorient the man so they could remove him from the vehicle. The man was later evaluated at a local hospital.
Thoughts
This is tricky because of many previous situations across US where emotionally unstable individuals did great damage with suicidal and homicidal actions. We guess that this was going into the minds of the customers, employees and the owners that were in dangerous after this person parked his car on that particular parking lot.
No matter if that person had a gun or a bomb, or maybe nothing, on him, this is a really scary situation. You don’t know how to act and you are totally depending on other people’s actions. Like in this situation, if the police is taking care of it, the best decision is to stay low and wait for the situation to be resolved.
But, the real question is how you would act in such situations without the police. Is it smart to be quiet,
hide and beg for mercy, or is it smarter to act and stop the emotionally unstable person from doing any harm? No matter how you will answer this question, we just wanted to get your attention that this harmful and dangerous events could happen in any community and that being aware about it may save when and if the time comes.
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