| Two dead, several injured in Tualatin shooting |
I was enjoying a late lunch at work yesterday, when someone walked in and asked me if I'd heard about the shootings in Tualatin? My first thought was "Tualatin? Nothing EVER happens in Tualatin....", which is just a sleepy little suburb a few miles down I-5 from Portland. As it turns out, a man shot and killed his estranged wife and wounded two other people before apparently turning his gun on himself. The crime scene is about 3.5 miles from my office and about 2.5 miles from my home, and to say that it got my attention (along with pretty much everyone else I work with) would not be an exaggeration. I work and live in Tigard, which borders Tualatin, and is every bit as sleepy as Tualatin. When a horrific crime such as this happens in your own backyard, it's probably natural to begin wondering what's happening in our world. Given the lack of solid information initially available about this shooting, it was natural to begin trying to fill in the blanks, and there were a few rumors flying around our office yesterday afternoon. In the end, while horrific, it was ultimately only about a relationship gone bad and not part of any wider threat to public safety.
I've lived and worked in three war zones, and I've dealt with the aftermath of a hurricane. Being around events that can and do often result in death is not exactly new for me, but neither is it something I've ever managed to get used to. Sure, death is a part of life, something we all experience eventually. Even so, I'd hazard a guess that few of us expect to have our lives ended suddenly, violently, and for no discernible reason.
We read and hear reports of murders and bombings in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and we barely skip a beat in our daily routine. Yet a seemingly random shooting in our neighborhood will get our attention in a heartbeat. I suppose wholesale, remote death and destruction is little more than an abstract concept, something we see on the evening news just before the weather and sports. Retail death, death up close and personal...well, that does seem like a tragedy, doesn't it?
Don't get me wrong, any senseless death anywhere diminishes humanity. When someone loses enough of their grip on reality that they can take the life of another human being without a pang of regret or guilt, we all suffer...whether it's in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Tualatin. It's just that this sort of violence is supposed to happen somewhere else...isn't it??
