At 9 p.m. last Wednesday, the clapping of a helicopter could be heard circling over Welby Way in Winnetka. The house across from Roxana's was awash in lights. Over a loudspeaker, she heard voices, saying something she couldn't make out.

She didn't pay much attention at first, instead focused on cooking quesadillas for her daughter. Later she went to her room to go to sleep. The house was quiet. Then she heard a helicopter again and the loudspeaker more clearly - "This is LAPD. Edwin come out. We're trying to help you."

It was the early stages of last week's predawn raid that left five people dead, including SWAT Officer Randal Simmons and Edwin Rivera who had called police out to his home saying he had killed several members of his family and to "Come get me."

Neighbors were under seige. One of them, Roxana, agreed yesterday to talk with me with the understanding that I'd not use her last name. She's still afraid.

As she tried to sleep, figuring the police would take care of the problem across the street, she was annoyed at the helicopter that never stopped circling. She looked out the window and didn't see police cars, but the house was awash in bright light.

She got out of bed and went to the living room window that looks directly on the street. She saw police with guns drawn and aimed at the house.

"Then I got really scared," She said. "There was a hostage situation and it was close to home, too close."

She told her brother-in-law to lock his door. She checked the doors and front and back windows to make sure they were closed.

"I was thinking maybe someone was inside the house," she said, recalling a case about a year ago in which cops came to the neighborhood to quell a neighborhood disturbance.

She went to check on her son. He appeared to be asleep. She took her young daughter into her room. "Everybody was OK. So I went back to bed ... Then, 'Oh my God, here we go again."

Daughter slept with Mom. Then mom began to worry about bullets coming through her walls, but she was hopeful police would break it up before it went that far. But just in case, she put herself between the wall and her daughter in case bullets came flying through.

They tried to sleep. The helicopter pounded. The police kept telling Edwin to come out, to answer his phone, to release the hostages. They wanted to help injured people. Over and over again the helicopter. Roxana tried to close her eyes.

11 p.m. she looked through her bedroom window. Police were still there, standoff.

She dozed off a little while.

At midnight, noise woke her up. Looking through her bedroom window again, she saw SWAT all in black from head to toe.

"Thank God the SWAT team's here," she said, "so they could stop this."

She saw more police. Two officers ran back and forth in the street. She saw SWAT in the rear side of her house. In the doorway of the house across the street, officers prepared to enter the house, one on one side of the door, another on the other side.

Some of them stood by the side of the house by a window, with guns drawn. One of them kicked the door open. One of them went inside. Gunshots.

"I grabbed my daughter and rolled over the bed and onto the floor and I was hugging my daughter, trying to crawl out of the room, thinking that bullets were going to come through my room."

More gunshots - "Pop pop, "really ugly, really bad."

She checked herself and her daughter for bullet wounds.

"She was hugging me so tightly, clinging to my shoulders, hugging me really tight."

When it stopped, she went to her son's room to check on him. He was quiet. She checked walls for holes. She heard an ambulance.

"Thank God it was over."

She went back to bed and tried to get her daughter to bed.

2 a.m., helicopter. She checked the window. Police were still there.

She went to sleep.

Gunfire awoke her at 5 - pop, pop, pop, pop. She grabbed her daughter, and threw themselves onto the floor, crawling out from the room.

Back to her son's room. All three climbed into bed.

The brother-in-law tried to go to work, but cops blocked off the street.

"Mommy, did you hear that? Bombs," her daughter said.

7 a.m., things quieted down. But the house across the way was on fire.

And it would be the beginning of a lengthy investigation and the extensive coverage by a long line of media crews that would descend on Welby Way.

Today, officers are gone and the yellow police tape has been removed. The tree-lined street began returning to normal, five days after the 10-hour standoff left three people wounded and five dead.

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