“I was awakened around 11:30ish last night to what sounded like a man groaning in pain trying to yell help”

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by Prince Of Petworth February 23, 2016 at 10:10 am 4 Comments

“Dear PoPville,

I’m wondering if you could do a post regarding police activity on Church St NW last night. I was awakened around 11:30ish last night to what sounded like a man groaning in pain trying to yell help. I couldn’t see exactly where he was/what was going on (my building overlooks the alley behind P and Church St NW with another apartment building blocking my view to Church). When I called 911, the dispatcher told me they’d already gotten calls about it and an ambulance was on its way (it arrived a few minutes after I hung up with dispatch).

Anyway, I’m wondering if anyone else heard it and knows what happened. I hope whoever it was is okay!”

HaileUnlikely

Oddly enough, I was awakened by something similar at about 12:30 Saturday night/Sunday morning, 6 miles away in Takoma. Also called the police, who responded but did not find anything.
Chris

It was probably just a neighbor watching a rebroadcast of the presidential election debates.
JoDa

Despite the jokes, THANK YOU for checking it out and calling it in. You never know what might have happened.
.
Several years ago, I was visiting friends. After they called it a night, I stepped outside to have a smoke before turning in myself, and heard a groan. I peeked around the corner of their house and saw a man laying in the yard between their homes (technically the neighbor’s front yard, but these are old homes with only a few feet between them), groaning. Not knowing who he was, I raced back inside and yelled out “there’s someone laying in the side yard groaning. He seems hurt. I’m calling 911!” They raced downstairs, peeked out the side window, and gasped “that’s the neighbor!” before running out to see what was wrong. It turns out he had come home more than slightly intoxicated and taken a header down his porch stairs while trying to unlock the door. While at the time we thought it was “unfortunate foibles of the drunk,” a few days later his daughter came over and thanked them for calling for help…HE HAD BROKEN HIS NECK IN THE FALL, and it went down to below 20 that night, so he would have been at least paralyzed, if not frozen to death, had someone not noticed him out there. He ended up making a full recovery.
.
And, yeah, don’t get on your high horse about him drinking too much. He didn’t drive home (he took the bus, which stops almost directly in front of his house), and he had an unfortunate accident when he was literally feet from safety. I was only out there and heard him because I was partaking in a different vice (my friends joke that “this is probably the only recorded incident where smoking SAVED a life”). It’s our civic duty to at least REPORT when someone might be in need of help, regardless of how they came to need that help. He’s a nice guy…gave my dog a pet when I visited about a year ago and we had the pups out in the yard. Glad he lived to give my dog an ear scritch (he had no idea that I was actually the one that saw him/called…he introduced himself to me on that occasion, several years after the incident).
Pamela Rao

I am also interested in finding out any more information about the incident last night on Church St. I didn’t hear anything, but there were 2 or 3 police cars outside my window for quite some time.

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