Dodging A Bullet

The big news here last week was the three shootings in Scarborough in the space of a few hours Wednesday night. It was all the talk at the office too, because one of the shootings happened right outside our doors. (That's our building in the background of the picture in the linked article.)

When I stepped off the bus Thursday morning, there was a CITY-TV cameraman filming the intersection. As I hadn't heard any news that morning, I didn't know why he was there. But that's where the drive-by shooting occurred, where a man was shot dead. In my morning pre-coffee stupor I probably walked right by the blood stains without noticing.

The shooting had happened right at the intersection at about 5:20pm Wednesday evening. That's roughly the time I would normally be waiting for the bus at that corner, or, indeed, crossing the crosswalk to get to the bus stop. Not to make it overly dramatic, because there were other people standing at the bus stop--a couple of people from the office, in fact--and they weren't directly in danger's way, but under normal circumstances I would have been in the vicinity of the shooting, and...well, who knows what would have happened. Bullets can ricochet. Instead, I ended up getting a drive downtown at 4:30 with a colleague to pick up the Canadian Music Week pass and "swag" bag.

And they say music can't save your life!