Whenever tragedy strikes any community, local news outlets inevitably quote at least one bystander as saying, "things like that just don't happen here."
I'm not naive enough to believe that's true; there is no such thing as a "here" where bad things don't happen. I learned that the hard way long ago. But that doesn't make it any less horrifying when tragedy strikes your town.
Yesterday, five women were shot and killed in a Lane Bryant store not four miles from where I live, and only a few doors away from the Super Target where I do my grocery shopping and the Petsmart where I take my dog for obedience classes. After so many public shootings in recent years, no one shopping in that center could have said with any confidence, "that wouldn't happen here." But by the same token, you don't expect to see a man with a gun while you're out picking up your week's groceries or shopping for a new dress.
I've been reading the book "The Stranger Beside Me," true crime author Ann Rule's account of the murders committed by famed serial killer Ted Bundy. Rule and Bundy had been friends; they'd met while volunteering together at a crisis center and spent many hours chatting together. Years later, Rule, a journalist at the time, was reporting on the murders of young women in Washington and Oregon when she realized that much of the evidence police had gathered pointed toward her old friend. In the book, she details her personal struggle as both a journalist at Bundy's friend, and she tells the stories of the women who died, and the women who lived.
Yesterday morning, before I heard about the murders at the Lane Bryant store, I was reading a passage in the book about murders Bundy committed in a sorority house in Florida after escaping from prison in Colorado. Two women were killed, and two were severely injured. Reading what happened to them turned my stomach, but even scarier to me were the details about the other women who lived in the sorority house. One escaped injury by a fraction of a second, having walked down the hall from the bathroom to her bedroom at the exact right time to just miss Bundy. Another entered the back door just as Bundy went running out the front.
Whenever senseless things like this happen, there seems to be a very thin line dividing those who live and those who die. Something as simple as Saturday shopping can get a person shot, while staying out late with friends can mean escaping a violent murder. And the faceless serial killer you're having nightmares about every night can turn out to be the nice man who sits next to you at work.
Police aren't sharing many details about yesterday's shootings, other than to say they believe the man has left the area. Until they can say more, I just won't be able to relax. While I am confident that police are doing everything they can, I couldn't help checking my locks three times before I went to sleep last night or looking around at church this morning for a man who fit the description of the suspect.
I've always known it could happen here, but now that it has, I can't help wondering when it will happen again.
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