Herkimer Residents React To Kurt Myers Incident

No one is quite sure why he did what he did, but the wounds caused by 64 year-old Kurt Myers are still very real and very raw.

"He was a client here at our office," "We did represent him in a matter, it wasn't a criminal matter and we probably can't disclose because of attorney/client privilege. But, he was a client of our about five years here at our office. I may have been in contact with him, there's so many clients I don't know, but he was obviously in our offices at some point. I didn't personally know him, no."

That was Linda Bambara, an employee at Herkimer's Castle Law Firm. She says she knew at least one person killed during yesterday's incident.

Next door at the Empire Diner, Dot Sykes and her mother, Janice Morse, said they were eating breakfast in the establishment when the incident began. Today, they came back to the little diner in North Main Street, relieved to find a conclusion to the event.

Still, the two believe the city can recover.

"I still think it's a nice city, it's just once in a while these things happen... [this time] it happened to us," Morse said. Her daughter nodded. "The police response was great. I felt safe and we had enough police, I didn't figure he was going to get out," Sykes, who currently lives in Florida, said.

Soon after, Morse quieted herself slightly when talking about the healing process.

"It'll take a lot of time, but people will eventually, you know... it'll go in the background and fade like everything else does."

Across from the two women, Michael Lee Pollack and his three-year-old daughter were waiting to be picked up and taken to Ilion. The two were inside an apartment next door to where 64 year-old Kurt Myers was hiding.

"Throughout the whole thing, I always felt a stray bullet could have possibly hit in there, but you always have that fear... the back-lying fear, you know, that something wrong could happen," Pollack said. "Murphy's Law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But, no, I felt pretty confident that the police were going to keep us safe."

When he was allowed out of his home, Pollack shook hands with several SWAT members, thanking them for keeping him and his daughter safe.

The shock will wear off in time, but for now the city's residents will come together and cope, helping those closest to the senseless attacks weather the storm of emotions yet to come.