Armed and dangerous
An interesting story from last evening: long after we thought that Hallowe’en, with its masked entities had ended, a message came in from son #3. This would have been after midnight, and he sent a link to an active webcam.
Seems that in (our old city) the Old City, the police were on high alert. Any time the cars start to roll, in the dark, the obvious assumption is “shooter alert”. Given that the police were telling everyone to get back inside (and stay there), it seemed like a reasonable theory. The webcam showed lots of blue/red lights, and cars zipping past.
Now, we live in an age where we don’t have to wait for the headlines “tomorrow morning”, and Twitter carried various data streams. The police, for a change, were forthcoming with details. An individual, in costume (Hallowe’en, right?) was armed… with a sword. Specifically, a katana, which is both long and sharp. The individual was on a mission of mayhem, and within the hour had wounded five and killed two others. For real.
I know the area, fairly well; he made his way, downhill, to the area of the city where there are no exits. And the police were waiting. He (it’s almost always a young male, in these situations) was taken to the hospital to remedy a bad case of hypothermia, before being placed under arrest. I sat through the virtual press conference, this morning. Indentifying details carefully removed, but we know that this was a case of insane behavior. The press, tomorrow, will give us too many details, but that won’t bring two people back to life.
