Hearing a Mosque Being Raided on my Computer Speakers

I owned a taxi for five years, so I could make my own hours and days.

I was living in St. Louis when 9-11 happened. I heard the towers being attacked on the radio in my cab (I was listening to the "Bob and Tom" comedy program). I parked my car and went inside a bank and watched the whole thing on their big-screen TV mounted on the wall. Everyone was standing their silently watching the towers burn).

Perhaps two weeks later I was on my computer (about five in the morning) when I heard a police raid come over my speakers. To this day I have no idea how I picked up. It was the one and only time I picked up anything on my speakers.

The police were conducting a raid on a local mosque. I still don't know where that mosque was located, but the few Muslims in St. Louis lived in the Bevo Mill area, which wasn't that far from where I lived. So I figured that's where I picked up the raid.

The police sounded totally professional and not upset at all. But they were conducting this raid before the sun was up.

I listened to it for perhaps half an hour, then decided to leave to pick up my students going to school on the desegregation program.

I did hear the word "mosque" several times, to that's why I knew it was a raid on one.

When I watched the news that night there was no a word about a raid. I even bought the newspaper - not a word about it.

To this day I have no idea who did the raid. FBI? Local police? Not a clue. Did they find anything? Not a clue. Is the mosque still there? Not a clue (I moved out of St. Louis many years ago).

That's one of the many stories I have about owning a taxi. Had I gotten up later I would have missed the raid completely.