Yesterday's Adventure

Around 2:00 pm yesterday an alarm came on over the intercom system that I’ve never heard before accompanied by someone saying, “Attention everyone; this is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. This building is now on lockdown. No one is allowed in or out of the building. I repeat again, this is not a drill.” Within a minute or two the building became eerily silent.

Last week everyone in my building was sent an e-mail with an ex-employee’s picture on it. The e-mail said, “BE ON THE LOOKOUT. This former employee was forcefully removed from the building yesterday and has been seen on the grounds since. If you see this employee trying to get into the building call security immediately; do not open the door for anyone you do not know.”

Naturally I began thinking, “oh great-this guy is back and now we have to wait for security to find and catch him." I just tucked myself into my cubical and kept my ears perched for any sounds, but like I said, the building was silent. Apparently everyone was doing the same thing.

After about 20 minutes one of my coworkers stepped into my cubical. I asked him if he’d seen anything going on and he mentioned that there police outside with k-9’s trying to sniff someone out. A manger came by and yelled at us that there was someone with a gun outside and that we needed to get to a conference room with no windows immediately. We went to the nearest conference room where someone was inside holding the door shut. He let us in and there were around a dozen people inside waiting for the “all clear” announcement to come on the loud speakers. Eventually people began getting texts that there had been an armed robbery at the Home Depot across the street and the assailants drove to our parking lot to hide out. Another 20 minutes went by and we were told it was now safe to return to work. I never heard if they caught any robbers or not, but apparently they weren’t around anymore. In the end no one got inside our building and we never heard any commotion, but to be honest it was a bit scary. I suppose California has earthquakes, the Northeast gets ice storms, Kansas gets tornadoes, Florida get hurricanes, and apparently Detroit gets armed robberies. The event didn’t even make the news, so apparently people around here are bored of hearing about things like this. As a side note, no one has seen the disgruntled employee since we received that e-mail, so he’s probably moved on.

*Update*

On early Tuesday afternoon, an aggressive assailant incident occurred in the retail shopping center across Mercury Drive from FN1-3 and resulted in one assailant eluding police by crossing our property.  Dearborn police swept the area and gave the all clear. We will be following up with DPD on any additional actions or recommendations they may have for us.