On a warm evening when she would usually listen to baseball and late-night radio, Orphan Annie decided to check on the boy who had jumped from the train and was now at the sheriff’s station. She followed her usual wooded path toward Main Street, intending to reach the alley by the station where deputies sometimes stepped out for a smoke.

As Annie reached the back of the shuttered Gem theater, she saw three vans turn down Pine Street and slip into the overgrown parking lot without lights. The vans parked in a formation suggesting a quick exit. Several men and women exited; one man wore a sportcoat, another had short blond hair, and an older woman wore a dark red pantsuit, while a woman in a flower-print dress carried a purse.

The group moved with military precision. From the vans they retrieved a steel box and holster belts. The box held long guns that Annie recognized as assault-style weapons. Most participants armed themselves; the flower-dress woman added a small handgun to her purse, and the man beside her concealed a larger handgun at the small of his back. The sportcoat man stood back and observed, not arming himself.

Concluding they were a raiding party come for the boy at the sheriff’s station, Annie ran along the path to the back stairs of the apartment above the DuPray Barber Shop. She pounded on the door and urgently warned the tenant, Corbett “Drummer” Denton, insisting there would be shooting and begging him to bring his guns.

Drummer initially dismissed her, demanding to smell her breath and asking if she was hallucinating. Annie, sober and distraught, convinced him of her sincerity by breaking down in tears, something he had never seen her do. He agreed to go with her to look, but refused to bring any firearms despite her pleas.