Got out for my Sunday walk at 5.30 am. Dark of course. Venus and Jupiter are prominent in the east. Saw some odd lights up at the big intersection of River and Panorama. (That’s the arterial with a panoramic view of the Kern River Field, still one of the world’s largest oil fields.)
Routine is good that way. You know what to expect. Those lights weren’t the traffic lights.
As I got closer, the picture began to come into view.
Big vans, Police Crime Unit, bunch of police cars, lights flashing. Hmm. That’s very odd at this hour.
The little parking lot for Panorama Park is closed off with yellow tape. Lots of little yellow cones on the pavement. Hmm. Looks like a TV crime show.
I cross the street normally then I see what must be a body laying on the pavement near the cars that are still parked there. There’s a white cover over it. I go on the rest of my walk and on the way back they’re getting ready to load the body on a stretcher. By now, 6.00 am, more are milling about so the police have rigged up a black screen around the body. I slide by the yellow tape to get my crosswalk signal and cross the street and walk on home.
Looks like we’ll make the crime section next week. Yep, 19-year old shot a 17-year old who was trying to break up a fight. Apparently there was a crowd of young people there watching the fight with their cell phones. They caught the whole thing from various angles.
By the time I drove by at 7.45 am on my way to yoga, the tape was gone, the little yellow cones were gone, and the parking lot was back to normal. People were out taking their morning walk along the bluffs like usual.
Life’s so tenuous and yet life goes on.
