Crime Watch
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008At about 2:30pm I decided to take a break from work and venture down the road for a quick look at yesterday’s crime scene.
There were several news vans and various people hanging about a moderate distance away from the building, and a few of them looked at me as I passed. The ITN van had a parking fine notice attached to its windscreen (London’s hard-working parking inspectors in evidence).
Crime scene tape had been put around the entire base of the building, so I wondered how tricky it would be for the building’s residents to access their homes.
I decided to visit the cafe for the first time in a few weeks. The usual people were there. I got quite upset with a guy who made a joke out of the murder and then said that it wasn’t sad because this kind of thing happened all the time. In my opinion, murder is a tragedy, no matter how often it happens.
Later on I read the news reports about the case on the way home from work. Apparently the suspect was stalking the victim, whom he’d met at a local church. The girl and her family reported him to the police, but the authorities didn’t take action against him before this happened.
7:15 pm on 5-Jun-08
A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.
You probably know where that comes from. Your fellow gawker is in fine company.
1:54 pm on 12-Jun-08
I’m reading your blog backwards so I haven’t read about the crime, but interestingly my last blog post was about the crime situation here in Trinidad. Every murder is horrifying, and I wonder how the lovely man who joked about this one would have felt if it had been his sister who’d been stalked and murdered. He doesn’t have to care about every victim, but no murder is never a joke.