shooting cancels voiceover recording session

crime sceneThere have been a LOT of weird things that have taken place in my voiceover career.

I’ve had voiceover recording sessions cancelled for various reasons over that same time period but this recent situation may actually rank near the top of the list for strangest reasons to cancel a recording session.

As I tell this story, I will be omitting the city and the studio I was working with because I think this situation could reflect badly on both and that would be completely unfair. What took place could happen anywhere to anybody. Random violence is just that…random.

Lastly, to be very clear, I was never personally in any danger nor did I directly see the criminal activities about to be described. The bad stuff was over before I got there.

I was in Ohio recently and, while there, received an email from a long time client who needed a voiceover script recorded. I can do such recordings on my portable system but for this client, I wanted to use a studio.

So I called a studio in town that I have used before and booked a 10:00 am session. Nice studio, nice engineer, all good.

About 9:55, I turn the corner onto the street the recording studio is on and was met with a wall of police cars, maybe 5-7 cars completely blocking the road, lights flashing. Cops everywhere.

I could see past the blockade that road was completely clear, so I figured there must be a similar blockade down the road (turns out I was right).

Point is neither my car nor anyone else’s car was getting down that street. I look at my GPS and I was only 900 feet from the studio. But no person would be getting down the street either, unless they were wearing a police badge.

So I call the studio and the engineer answered his cell phone. He also could not get to the studio but had been advised by police that there was a shooting near (but not involving in any way) his studio. It just happened in the area near to the studio, similarly impacting all the other businesses and homes there.

Clearly we wouldn’t be getting to the studio anytime soon. I went back to my hotel, built my pillow fort and got the recording done there.

After gathering news reports, here is what happened.

Around 9:00 am, undercover police officers were targeting an area where drug deals are known to happen. Police there saw a deal take place and approached the suspect. The suspect ran to his car and tried to speed off , using his car to hit one police office as he tried to escape.

I’m not a lawyer or a cop but I believe that’s considered using a vehicle as a weapon, so police opened fire on the car, hitting the suspect who crashed his car not far from the original drug deal. The suspect later died; the police officer’s injuries were reported as not thought to be life threatening.

The reality is out there for all of us but, fortunately, we don’t see much of it from the front row like that.

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