Trail of Death/Aurora/Sat Sept 30/12:45 pm. Officer J Vandebogart reports: "Victim had a relationship with the witness. The victim is male, white, 21. Witness is white, female, 31. Their relationship ended about two weeks ago. The victim has been very upset over the breakup. Victim called witness to tell her that he had a gun and was going to kill himself. Witness asked victim where he was. He said that he was in the cemetery behind the motel. Witness and her two children, witness one (female, 13) and witness two (male, 11) went to look for him. When they couldn't find him, they returned to their motel room.

"The phone rang again. It was the victim calling from his cell phone. Witness asked him where he was, and he again made threats to kill himself and told witness that he was on the trail behind the cemetery. Witness's two children ran off without her to look for him. The children located him sitting on some grass beside the cemetery trail. As they approached him, he pulled out a handgun and shot himself in the chest. He then stood up, walked a few feet, dropped the gun, and started to walk north on the cemetery's trail for several hundred feet. He had a gunshot wound on the upper-left chest area.

"Witness three was working outside [and] heard the gunshot. Witness three then saw three teens walking, one limping, north on the cemetery's trail.

"The wounded victim then called 911 for assistance. He talked to 911 briefly but couldn't continue. He dropped the phone. Witness four was walking by and assisted by picking up the phone and talking to the 911 operator. Witness four gave their location. SPD arrived and requested SFD assistance. SFD transported victim to HMC. The victim-assistance team was requested to assist the two young witnesses out of shock. VST arrived at the motel room and treated the children. The victim is a convicted felon. I request a felon-in-possession-of-a-firearm (.357-caliber Magnum, four-inch barrel, six shot, blue revolver) charge."

It is unknown if the victim survived or died from the self-inflicted wound.

Though the incident is at core truly tragic, there's a layer in its surrounding atmosphere of dread and sorrow that has the enchanting glow of a fairy tale. The children (Hansel and Gretel, brother and sister—the closest and most mythic bond of all possible family bonds, according to Hegel), the woods, the cemetery, the trail, the way the children run to their mother's former lover and face him, face his misery, which he shoots, and they watch with wide-open eyes his lifeblood soak his shirt. What witness three sees from a distance ("three teens walking, one limping") is death leading a boy and girl to the land of No Thing. Even though the incident takes place in the middle of a sunny day, we see it, while reading, as happening at dusk. Thick shadows grow over the sister and brother; they are leaving the daylight of childhood and entering, Cecil Taylor—wise, the long night of adulthood.