Death

Friday night I was standing outside after anatomy lecture at the community college, talking to a friend from class, and we heard a man screaming. I mean really screaming. It was coming from an apartment building across the street. We became uneasy and she drove me around the block to my car, worrying if we should call 911, but when we got to my car there were 2 police cars there. One of them pulled into the parking lot of the apartment building so I figured it was handled and drove on home. It's a kind of a rough building, the people living there look as if they are lower-income, possibly formerly homeless, that sort of thing, so I hoped that the man was screaming at his voices or something. Fifteen years of working with the seriously mentally ill kind of inures you to screaming.

In the morning we returned for lab class and there were news crews in the college parking lot. Not a good sign. I checked the internet when I got home.

The man was screaming because someone was murdering him. He died of blunt force trauma. Someone, presumably the suspect, jumped out a 3rd story window to escape and was not caught.

I've been kind of freaked out. There was nothing I could have done. But to know that what I heard was him dying? That's an awful feeling. I hope he's in a better place.