On Friday night some kid, Santa Monica son of a TV director, apparently went postal in the student neigborhood where I live and ran down a bunch of kids (killed 4, 1 in critical), like he was playing real-life Carmaggeddon or something. We’ve been getting some odd specific info about it that probably isn’t in the national news-- it was an intentional act, he blew through a stop sign at 60 in a 25 zone; the kid was being a total wacko, yelling afterward about how he’s the “Angel of Death,” taking swings and kicking at the kids who tried to keep him from leaving the scene-- trying to pick fights until a cop got there and took him down with a baton.
I’m a grad student, and I don’t know any of the undergrads affected, so I’m better off than most. It’s odd- the idea that it was intentional bugs me much more than when I thought it had been just some drunk kid passing out at the wheel. It seems much more random and bizarre, like no one could have known that it could happen-- there was no way those kids could have expected something like this, to have been more careful.
Anyway, just purging, I think. I walk down those sidewalk-less streets all the time. I think everyone here realizes that it could have been them-- It’s a real sense of mortality and emphemeral-ness.
P.S.- and two weeks ago another UCSB kid was killed at his parents’ home apparently by putting batteries in an anonymously mailed mail-bomb in the form of one of those mechanical dog toys. Strange term here at UCSB.