Lindsey Graham

She'd always suspected that the garage next door didn't really service cars.

Men were frequently going at all hours of the night, and rarely did she see anyone working on automobiles.

She was pretty sure that the garage was a front for bootleggers, so if there was going to be a business nearby that would attract gunfire, SMC Cartage was it.

After hearing what she believed was gunfire, she turned to her mother, who lived with her.

She was sitting in a rocking chair next to the window, so Landsman asked her mother if she'd seen anything unusual.

Her mother said she saw what looked to be a detective car pull up to the building and then speed off.

Lansman shook her head, confused, because as far as she knew, only gangsters carried machine guns, not police, and she was still sure that's what she heard.

So Lansman crept over to the window and peered out, just in time to see several men piling into a car, but they got in too fast for her to count how many.

The car then peeled out and raced down Clark Street.

Convinced that something really bad had happened in that garage, Lansman told her mother that she was going downstairs to get a better look,

As she made her way down the two flights of stairs and walked next door, she could hear a dog howling inside the garage.

She stood on her tiptoes and tried to look in the window, but couldn't see anything.

She called out, but no one answered, and when she tried to push the door open, she found it was stuck.

Scared, she rushed back to her apartment building and knocked on the door of one of her neighbors, a man named Claire McAllister.

He was a freelance sign painter who worked from home, meaning he was one of the only men in the apartment building at the time.

Lansman asked him if he could go next door to check to see if anyone needed help.

He might be strong enough to get the door open.

McAllister agreed, and a few minutes later, he came running back up the stairs, his face ashen.

He yelled for Landsman to call the police, telling her there were a bunch of men next door who were all shot up.

Landsman rushed back to her apartment and called the local police station located a half mile away.