A Double-Barreled Misunderstanding in Amherst, Massachusetts

 

Is it time to question Amherst’s water supply? Three weeks ago, an Amherst woman summoned police when she suspected that two construction workers might have been high-profile escapees from an upstate New York penitentiary. Now we turn to the following double-barreled mix-up, reported last week in The Daily Hampshire Gazette:

A woman who mistook two umbrellas for a shotgun prompted a police response to a field near the Amherst Regional High School Tuesday evening.

A resident walking her dog on Cottage Street called police at 8:02 p.m. after she was approached by a man whom she described as angry that her dog was running off-leash in his field, according to police records. The woman then told officers she observed the man handing an object that looked like a shotgun to his wife.

Responding officers determined that what the woman saw was actually two umbrellas, and not a firearm.  .  .

As an indication of the heightened awareness by residents, police were also contacted at 9:05 a.m. Tuesday when a man wearing what a caller described as a military-style protective vest was seen running in the area of Henry and Pine streets.

Police located the man jogging near Puffer’s Pond and identified what he was wearing as a weight vest used in his exercise regimen.

                                                

A Case of Mistaken Identity in Amherst, Massachusetts

Hard Hat & Steel Tipped Shoes at Kendrick Place in Amherst

Two weeks ago, just a day after the police had removed an offending spider from the auto of a driver paralyzed with fear, Amherst’s finest confronted a second, thornier challenge.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette explains:

After getting a tip that the two escapees from a maximum security prison in New York might be walking on the streets of Amherst at 1:28 p.m. Thursday, several police officers spent about 25 minutes trying to identify the two men who were described by a woman as muscular, tattooed, and wearing dark shirts and shorts. Police said the men, found at a downtown coffee shop, were determined to be construction workers and not the escaped convicts serving life sentences at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.

With the termination of one convict and the capture of the other last weekend, some Amherstites will no doubt sleep more easily. But they still have their memories of mistaken identities past.

Perhaps the most poignant occurred in November of 2004, when then Town Meeting member Patricia Church, in a fit of pique, removed the Texas state flag from a pole in front of Town Hall. (She was protesting President Bush and his un-Amherstican policies.)  She soon found herself, however, with a lot of explaining to do—especially to Amherst’s Hispanic community. That’s because she had mistakenly pulled down the flag of Puerto Rico.

 Another random act of mistaken identity? Perhaps not quite.