An argument erupted in a Hillman City convenience store. It was probably about something not worth arguing about. But the argument became a fight outside the convenience store. And the fight, which was captured by a surveillance camera in a coffee shop across the street, ended with the apparent loser pulling a gun on the apparent winner. The loser fired his weapon five times. One shot hit the moving target in the chest. Two shots on the back. One shot on the side of the head. One shot on the hip. One of those bullets proved to be fatal.
When the police arrived, they found a young man dying on the floor of Union Bar, where happy hour had just concluded. The bleeding man could still talk. His last words concerned his name, some information about the fight, and a request that the police call his mother because he was going to die. And he was right, he was pronounced dead not long after arriving at Harborview Medical Center.
But while bleeding on the bar floor, while he sobered drinkers with the fear that the violence may not be over, while the Cassini spacecraft plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere after orbiting the ringed planet for 13 years (NASA lost contact with the space craft an hour before happy hour at Union Bar ended), while the sounds of sirens approached him, he knew his time had come too soon. He was only 19, and there was no going back to that life; he was leaving all that could ever be and become forever.
And what was the argument about? The cops do not know. Maybe the man who turned himself in and is now charged with the murder will give us his side of the story. But what ever it is, it’s certainly something that, no matter what it’s value, cost the young his life.
