You Wake Up, Thrown on Some Shoes, and Walk Out the Door

I've covered a lot of stories. They run the gambit from mega boring(like standing outside of a courthouse waiting for whoever) to really interesting (Did you know that if everyone in America replaced five of the light bulbs in their house to CPF bulbs it would have the pollution removing effect of taking 9,000,000 cars off the road.), to memorable in a way that haunts you. Here is one such tale.

About two years ago a reporter and I were sent to East New York. Most of you probably haven't been there, but it's a lovely place to visit if you ever want to get an up close view of a drug war. Our story for that day involved a robbery gone wrong.

We arrive on the scene, a corner bodega. The incident in question happened in the early early morning so the police are long gone. The only ones around a the local residents and the media. A weird thing that people outside of my business don't know is that in NYC the media share information. You wouldn't think so, that we would hide things from each other and lie to one another, but we don't. I guess the print guys do, but not the TV and radio people. This is most true across mediums, radio people are more willing to help TV people, rather then other radio reporters and vice versa.

We spoke with the guy from 880 and he gives us the run down. A guy walks into a store pulls out a gun, demands money. He is given the money but for some reason he shoots the clerk in the shoulder. He runs outside and is gunned down. The last part is the twist. No one know who the other shooter was. Another criminal? A vigilante? A resident who had enough?

We go inside the store and speak with the day clerk. He tells us the night guy was his brother. He recounts the story from what he knows. His brother was shot and ran into the back room. Another worker mops up what's left of the blood trail that goes from the counter to the back of the store. We interview the clerk and he illustrates for us what happened. He tells us his brother is ok, and should survive.

Outside the residents are not interested in talking. "No Snitching" as the song goes. Don't talk to the media and never talk to the police. Good idea, keep that up, I'm sure your neighborhood will turn around in no time. After numerous attempts we finally get an older woman to talk about the situation. It isn't safe, drugs, too much violence, etc.

After we finish at the scene we go to the dead man's house. The police released his information, name, age, last known address, etc. It turns out the guys was 23, only a few years younger then myself at the time. It always strange when the person in your story is close to you in some way. We throw his address in the GPS and realize that its only two blocks away, in fact you can see the apartment complex from the bodega.

We go into his building and up to his floor, I think we got his apt number from the mailboxes in the lobby. We knock and no one answers, which is not that uncommon. We try a few neighbors, one of them said he seemed like a good boy. Everyone says that when you die. If you die your great, if you commit a crime you always seemed strange. In this case it was both so I guess the woman decided to throw the seemed into cover her bases.

As we left the apartment building and walked back to our truck I could see the bodega down the block. Walking the guys path made me feel strange. When you think about the moments leading up to this death, he threw on his coat, grabbed his keys and walkout the door. Down the stairs and onto the street, he walked to a place he's been to hundreds of times. Three minutes after he left his home he would be dead.

For some reason that story always haunts me. I think it has to do with the randomness of life and things not turning out the way we plan. One second your saying good by to your family, the next you are lying face up on a freezing Brooklyn sidewalk watching a street light fade to black.

Strange.