We were lucky enough to attend a congregation that had many lawyers in it. Unfortunately none of them were criminal defense attorneys. They did have hook-ups though and soon we had an attorney. Our first appointment with him we went in semi-light heart-ed. We were trying to see the humor of it all. We left broken heart-ed and stressed.
I don't want to go into too many details of that meeting. The feelings are still raw and I don't want to think about it. It was rough. It was intense. There were a lot of tears. When I'm pregnant, once the tears start flowing, I can't make them stop, and this was no exception.
Basically we were told this was much more serious than we thought it was. We were told that it while it was very likely we could get the charges dropped, it was not certain. We were told that they had seen Caleb as "cocky" and it made matters worse. We were told that this was quite possibly going to cost us around $10,000 because even if we got the charges dropped, it was likely we'd get sued by all the businesses who had been shut down for the money they lost. We were also told that the city might sue us for the money they lost calling in the troops.
We were young. We didn't have a lot of money saved up. We had no debt and had just paid off all of our cars and we had a teeny bit of money in savings. That was it. We were in no place for this financial burden. I'm anal about money and cannot stand not having some savings for a rainy day. I was so sick to my stomach about being in debt. I couldn't believe we were likely going to spend hours in court and away from my sweet babies. It was just crazy.
Luckily it did not take a lot of time to get the charges dropped. I believe it took a couple of weeks. That was a relief. Then we waited anxiously to see if any businesses would sue us. At about the four month mark we felt relief and were starting to think it a done deal and we were good to go.
Then we received a bill in the mail from the city for a little over $4,000 for costs accrued.
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