disturbing
Jan. 18th, 2011 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI'm not sure how much play this story got outside the local area.
Ten years ago, a local woman mysteriously disappeared and has not been seen since. The man she was on a date with that evening, the last known person to see her, was eventually arrested and charged with her murder, but after two years in jail without trial, his charges were dropped for lack of usable evidence.
But a lot of people still think he did it, and one of them was the victim's brother. Apparently by happenstance, the brother saw the suspect in a local restaurant on Saturday evening, had words with him, and then went out and got a gun (probably either from his car or his nearby home), confronted him again at a coffee vendor in the same shopping center, shot him dead, and then went out to the parking lot and killed himself. (Tell us again how widespread gun ownership makes us safer?)
What brings it up close to me is that, while I've never been in either of those particular establishments, I walk right past them all the time. It's the shopping center I visit probably more often than any other. It has a branch of my bank, it has my usual office supply and greeting card stores, it has the movie theatre where I saw both Fair Game and True Grit within the last month, it has a lunch place I do visit frequently and which is almost adjacent to Peet's, so I really do walk past its front door often.
Not my only close encounter with a crime scene, but disturbing.
Ten years ago, a local woman mysteriously disappeared and has not been seen since. The man she was on a date with that evening, the last known person to see her, was eventually arrested and charged with her murder, but after two years in jail without trial, his charges were dropped for lack of usable evidence.
But a lot of people still think he did it, and one of them was the victim's brother. Apparently by happenstance, the brother saw the suspect in a local restaurant on Saturday evening, had words with him, and then went out and got a gun (probably either from his car or his nearby home), confronted him again at a coffee vendor in the same shopping center, shot him dead, and then went out to the parking lot and killed himself. (Tell us again how widespread gun ownership makes us safer?)
What brings it up close to me is that, while I've never been in either of those particular establishments, I walk right past them all the time. It's the shopping center I visit probably more often than any other. It has a branch of my bank, it has my usual office supply and greeting card stores, it has the movie theatre where I saw both Fair Game and True Grit within the last month, it has a lunch place I do visit frequently and which is almost adjacent to Peet's, so I really do walk past its front door often.
Not my only close encounter with a crime scene, but disturbing.
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-18 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 01:11 am (UTC)But if that's what you want to focus on, I will point out that the sort of list you provide can show that such events do occur. But it can't show that they are more frequent in one group than in another. That's a statistical statement about a population, and such statements require statistical evidence, not striking examples.
In either case, my position was not one for or against the conclusion. It was against the readiness of political partisans to resort to unsound arguments quite cheerfully when those arguments support the positions they already favor for emotional reasons, even if they would be quick to point out that similar arguments from other factions were devoid of merit. I certainly have my own political opinions, often strongly held, but I try to remember that what I find it appealing to believe and what the evidence would show to someone with different preferences are not the same.