The Scenes Outside Monroe County Courthouse, January 3rd, 2023
On Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023, the nation had its eyes on a rain-soaked Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
This town, on said day, was host to the extradition hearing of the suspect accused of killing four University of Idaho students.
I am not writing this to go into the details of the case and its developments, but rather to recollect, and commentate, on the scene of the hearing, the Monroe County Courthouse in Stroudsburg’s Court House Square.
First off, let me highlight that the area surrounding the courthouse was completely sealed off to civilian vehicles.
At almost every entrance, there was one of those wooden orange and white striped barriers and a law enforcement vehicle either in front of the barrier, behind it, or both.
Occasionally, they would allow a few cars to pass by, or leave the premises, and they would be the only fish swimming in an empty pond.
Speaking of which, a huge chunk of vehicles that were parked within the enclosed area were news station vehicles.
It seemed as if most of those news vehicles were from Philadelphia, but I also saw some from New York, the Susquehanna Valley, and the Lehigh Valley.
In and around the Court House Square, tents intermingled with the holiday decorations that were still up.
Below these tents, reporters, and their crew, were preparing to go live at any moment.
Overall, the whole area composed of these news station crews, police officers, sheriff’s deputies (some of which were armed with assault rifles), and concerned civilians.
In front of the courthouse, various camera crews, from different stations, fiddled with their cameras and added their microphones to a stand.
A little more than an hour before the hearing began, civilians began to line up in front of the courthouse’s doors to enter; they started to shuffle inside at 2:30pm, exactly one hour until the hearing.
Behind the courthouse, a few reporters and civilians waited by the back entrance in anticipation for the suspect to be led to the van.
The entire road behind the courthouse, in which the van was located, was sealed off as previously described.
Above, a singular drone hovered in the air, among the clouds, like a mini helicopter trying to get an aerial view.
As it got closer to the time of the hearing, Court House Square experienced a gradual increase of foot traffic in front of the courthouse.
When the hearing was understood to be over, a noticeable amount of people hurried to the back of the courthouse, assumably to catch a glimpse of the suspect being led away.
While still in front of the courthouse, the crews that were still crowding around the many-headed microphone aimed their cameras at anyone professionally dressed who left the courthouse in the event they were with the District Attorney’s Office or the Public Defender’s Office and wanted to give a statement.
Upon being informed that there would be a press conference at 4:30pm, the media crowd beelined toward the building that housed the District Attorney’s Office, where the press conference was being held, with those with less equipment overwhelmingly winning the foot race.
From this point, cars started to drive through Court House Square again.
Succeeding the press conference, everything in town seemed to go back to normal in the dusk of twilight.
