A Strange Case

We live in uncertain times, there is no doubt.  I have no illusions of the reason people harm each other, but the yesterday I was witness to the death of another human being - in a manner of speaking. 

I didn't see the event mind you, but I heard it.  I was out in the garden, working on planting some ground roses when I heard what sounded like a very loud "Thud".  Then there was a cry, though I realize now it was a scream, then another thud.  At first I thought perhaps someone had nearly hit someone with a car, but nothing happened after it so I paid it no mind.  There were no sirens, nothing.  Still, there was an unsettling aura in the air that I didn't like. 

I got in the car go get some lunch and as I left the market about five minutes later two police cars came whizzing by me with sirens blazing.  By the time I got home, they had the block just above me roped off, and people were crowding around.  I didn't go down to see what was going on, I know better than to crowd the work of police doing their job.  I knew then something was very wrong though.  A few hours later my parents called and told me what happened and I was shocked. 

I don't know why I was shocked.  Just because I live in a small town doesn't mean murders don't happen here.  San Luis Obispo is a small town, and to be honest I in all the time I've lived here there have probably been many other cases like this.  Things happen all the time at Cal Poly, I hear about them through word of mouth, but this was a personal experience.

I can't help but feel strangely guilty.  I know I shouldn't  I had no knowledge of the events unfolding in that house, the domestic dispute that lead to this.  Still, one wonders after this, "could I have done something?"  I secretly wish I could, maybe seen the man leaving his car with the gun, called the police.  But I didn't.  I don't know if anyone did. 

In two minutes, a woman was alive, and then she was not.  In a few more, a man was arrested, and now lies in jail.  There, he will sit and wait for many years hereafter, most likely to die for his crimes.   Its a strange circumstance, an unfortunate one.  That he chose to kill another, and she died.  That I was within a block of an act of violence, literally within earshot of death.