I think I just saw a dead body...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I am a little freaked out. I am driving home from work at around 5:15 today. A little over a mile from home as I’m about to turn left, I see a bunch of police cars in the rear view. Obviously I stop, and they turn left in front of me. Once it’s clear, I turn left as well (not following, but cause that’s the way home). The cops have stopped about a block up. There’s already a couple of cars there, and an ambulance is a bit behind me. One of the cops waves me over - I tell him I live abuot 3/4 of a mile up and can he let me through. He does, but now I kind of wish he hadn’t. I saw a body face down. Nobody was performing CPR or anything, so I am assuming he’s dead.

I am a little shaken up.

The fact that there was a drive-by shooting (as related in this thread) in the same area yesterday doesn’t make me feel much better.

Shit.

2

Ewww, sorry, porcupine. That would shake me up too.

A few years ago a man was shot & killed down the street from me, in a drive-by. The next day when I walked my dogs by the spot, I saw that nobody had cleaned up the blood, and there was a lot of it. That grossed me out more than the body would have - I’ve seen dead bodies, but it seemed sort of disrespectful that his blood was all over the sidewalk almost a day later.

3

I was on the school bus in high school. As we passed 7-11, there was a body under a sheet outside of the 7-11. The armed (and now dead) man had tried to rob the store, and the clerk shot him. The clerk was fired.

In college, I left class early. In the street was the body of a motorcyclist in front of whom a car had turned out of the parking lot. A cop raised the sheet and I could see him.

About 1 year and a half ago I was driving home from a friend’s house in Las Vegas. (He always has a three-day birthday bash.) Traffic was terrible. Soon after crossing the state line, I saw the reason. A van with nine or ten people had crashed. I saw at least three bodies under sheets lying in the centre divider. I’m fairly certain that this was Kern county. That means that the coroner would have to come out from Bakersfield (a couple, three? hours away) which is the nearest major city, or at best from Barstow (about 90 minutes away). All the way home I thought about the corpses baking in the over-100º summer heat, and the ants and other critters that inhabit the desert.

4

Oh, re: the crash.

There were seven fatalities. I only distinctly remember seeing three of them though.

“Live each day as if it were going to be your last. One day you’re sure to be right.”

5

About a month ago, I was walking to one of my favourite bakeries during my lunch break. It’s a ten minute walk, and pleasant when the weather is clear. Which it was.
Upon arrival at the bakery, I notice two peculiar looking gentlemen in front of me. They’re busy ordering their rolls and such. One is dressed very neatly, although not exactly classy. Expensive suit, but kinda shiny. Kind of criminal, in a mafioso kind of way. Hard to put your finger on it.
His friend was of the Steven Seagal calibre. Tall, ponytail, unshaven, and a kneelong leather coat. All in all, they looked like bonafide crooks - no offence to any crooks reading this, of course.

They get their lunch, and sit down at a small table to eat. I order my roll as well, and after paying, I head out the store, back to the office. I have walked for maybe 20 meters, when I hear the bakery door open again. Involuntarily I look around. The two men step outside, still munching their lunch on the go.

The next thing I hear is a round of fire from an automatic weapon. Needless to say, I hit the floor. FAST. Looking up, I can only see the two guys, and not where the shots came from. The Seagal-lookalike pulls out a sawed-off gun from underneath his trenchcoat, and fire two shots. The expensively dressed gentleman drops to the floor, clutching his chest.

I hear tyres squeel as a car speeds off. Slowly, I get up, and start walking towards the two men, meanwhile grabbing my mobile to call the police. While I’m dialing, I see policemen running over from the station straight across the street. I just put my mobile back in my pocket.

The man who got hit was dead on the spot. One of the shots fired by Seagall had hit an 83 year old man in the leg. He was on the floor, crying his eyes out (as it turned out, the guy was a WWII vet. Needless to say this was a bit more than just a shot in the leg to him. Hell, even the shot would be enough to have ME in tears, let alone an elderly man!).

The deceased turned out to be a major hotshot in the Amsterdam underworld. Yes, we have one, it’s not ALL in the open :smiley:
Obviously, this was some sort of unsettled debt or something. The polics are still investigating it.

They questioned me on the scene about details, but a series of pilars where in between me and the first shooter, the car, and the elderly man. I only could see the two “victims”. One who died, and the other who admitted on the spot that the bullet that hit the elderly man was his.

Not much of a witness for the trial, then, so they sent me home after noting my phone number.

My heartrate must have been over 150 all day. Wow. I still feel sad about that poor old man, even though I heard he was treated and released immediately. But that sure must have brought back a lot of awful memories for him…

And I didn’t have a thing, besides a suit that needed drycleaning. Whew.

The blood stains are still visible in front of that bakery, since it lies in an (open) gallery, meaning there’s a roof overhead: no rain to wash it away.

6

Since everyone’s sharing dead body stories, I’ve got another to add. This happened to my brother and his fiance (now wife of 15 years).

They were in downtown Chicago on (I think) July 3rd (fireworks night). They were walking down the street and a cop directed them to go to the other side of the street. My brother asked what was going on, and the cop said “You don’t want to see this.” So they cross the (narrow) street and are my brother’s fiance steps on something. My brother tells her “Don’t look down.” It was a severed arm.

It turns out that some guys got drunk in a high rise office building and were running races up and down the hallway. One of he guys went through a plate glass window. Several stories down, he landed on part of the building that stuck further out. The next morning I was downtown and I could see the blood smear on that part of the building.

Eeeeeeeewwwwwww…

7

Coldie, it
s a good thing you didn’t linger in the bakery for a few more seconds. How long did it take you to walk 20 metres? A few seconds.

The closest I’ve been to a violent crime was when I was on jury duty. (Coincidentally, this was during the time of the O.J. Simpson trial.) I don’t know how the jury system is in The Netherlands, so I’ll describe the scene in L.A. I was in the County Courthouse (as opposed to the Criminal Court Building which is a block or two away). The potential jurors are supposed to remain in or near a large, open room. so that they can hear if they are called. There is a large glass wall that seperates the room from a breezeway where some people gathered for fresh air or to smoke. There is a hallway about 3m wide outside of the jury room.

As I was sitting in the jury room trying not to be bored senseless, I heard a pop. “That sounded like a shot!” I thought immediately. Then there were a couple more pops that came rapidly together. “Sounds like a small calibre,” I thought (there used to be frequent gunfire in my neighbourhood several years ago), “Too bad we’re not allowed to carry guns in public, as I wouldn’t mind having mine just in case the shooter comes in here.” Around me people were diving under the benches. I thought that was pretty useless, as A) anyone intent on carnage would get them anyway; and B) we were in the County Courthouse. The place is full of cops. After a minute I decided to kneel down beside a bench just to keep up appearances. Then I thought that that was a silly action and I sat back down on the bench. When order was restored I looked under the bench. Two feet were sticking out behind me (the benches were back to back). A woman of considerable girth had somehow managed to get under there.

The sad thing was the reason for the shooting, and a particular witness. A man and woman were in court to settle their divorce. The woman was awarded the car, so the man shot her. In front of their 8 (or 10) year old daughter. Must’ve been a hell of a car to be worth that.

8

Wow, Johnny. A pretty pathetic reason indeed. At least the guy I witnessed may have deserved it, in some way. Not advocating murder, of course, but you know what I mean.

Damn, I was glad to be away from that place, even when I was still that close. What surprised me was that the shots weren’t that loud. Maybe the shooter used some sort of silencer (I’m a complete dummy when it comes to weapons).

BTW, we don’t have a jury system here. Cases are settles by one (in civil cases) or three judges (in criminal cases). In a nutshell, of course, but the main point is: we leave the convicting to the pros :wink:

9

This is a fairly old one for me; it happened when I was living in Juneau back in 1989. I’d just gotten up to a beautiful late spring morning and was standing on the landing outside my door, looking across the Gastineau Channel. Not five seconds later and ambulance and three cops come barreling down the street, park, and the occupants go barreling out onto the dock across the street from me.

I head down to the docks and get into the gathering crowd. We look over the edge of the dock and there is a very dead man floating face-down in the water. Problem was he was in an area that was enclosed by the docks so they had to get a frogman to come under the docks from outside and bring him back out. Hell of a way to start the morning!

10

I wouldn’t shoot without hearing protection, but depending on how far away you are, and your angle to the muzzle, it might not be that loud.

My first “job” (aside from moxing lawns when I was a kid) was pulling targets at a two-day shooting competition. We stood in a pit and pulled the targets down after a shot, marked the hit with a disc, then pulled the target down again and patched the hole for the next shot. Even though we were well away from the shooters and down in a pit, the noise was deafining. Those 7.62mm projectiles were travelling well above the speed of sound and their shock waves sounded as if we were standing right next to the rifles being fired. But if we had been a few metres to the side of the shooters (kind of useless if you’re supposed to be working the targets! ;)) the moise would have been bearable. Several metres (or tens of metres) away, it would have sounded like a loud “pop”.

I haven’t been around silencers (they’re illegal here), but if I recall what I’ve read correctly the shots are nearly silent if subsonic ammunition is used.

BTW: I remembered another reaction to the court shooting. After I recognized the sounds as shots, I was offended that someone would bring a gun into a courthouse. I actually thought it was rude of someone to fire a gun around people who probably had never heard one IRL. I told this to a friend of mine, and he said that such dispassionate objective observation in a potentially life-threatening situation is a sign of mental illness. Who knows? Maybe I am mad?

11

Three years ago this spring, hubby and I were driving on the Tri-State Tollway outside of Chicago to go to his dad’s house. I noticed a lot of cops,with lights flashing, pulled over to the side of the road ahead. As we crept by, I saw a sheet-covered lump and several large blobs (about half the size of a volleyball) of pink tissue.

Turned out some guy had climbed on top of an overpass, jumped off (a drop of 20 ish feet), and been hit by at LEAST 8 cars, as it was rush hour. They never did figure out how many people hit him, as the 8 people were the only ones who owned up to it.

Yikes.

Then there was the time the drug dealer next door and his girlfriend got in an argument and she stabbed him in the stomach with a knife. He lived, she got arrested, and they both got evicted.

–tygre

12

Interestingly enough, although guns are illegal here, you can have all the silencers you want! :smiley:

They WERE loud pops, and given my position, they were probably unsilenced - given your description. I just expected Tarrantino-esque ear-shattering blows, I guess.

On a parting note: I don’t think that people who fire guns at 1 p.m. in front of a crowded mall are particularly obsessed with the alleged illegality of silencers :stuck_out_tongue:

13

I don’t think that people who fire guns at 1 p.m. in front of a crowded mall are particularly obsessed with the alleged illegality of guns! :wink:

14

It would have been cool if they’d gotten radared while speeding off though, eh?

15

An entire family in my neighborhood died last week. They were in a private plane on the way back from Thanksgiving holidays. After I read the article about them in the paper, I got chills when they said they had to be identified by dental records.

16

COP: “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
SHOOTER: “Uh… no.”
COP: “I suppose you don’t know what the speed limit is here. And you also shot someone.”

17

Ok, we’re doing dead bodies on this thread. I’ve seen quite a few and wasn’t really inclined to post until I read Coldie’s thread. When I drove a cab I was on East 11th street in Austin one weekend night, ~11:00 PM. That was a jumping avenue; lots of people about. I was pulled over by the driveway to a store parking lot that had about 60 people milling about. I’d been there a few minutes when I heard a not too loud boom and sensed a stir in the crowd. I looked around and there was a dead guy on the ground about eight feet from my car window. It looked like he’d been hit mid-torso with a shotgun.

Coldfire’s thread made me think of this, because I was just a few feet away and there was absolutely nothing useful I could offer the cops. I never saw it coming and never had a clue who the shooter might have been.

One more. When I got out of high school I played with some bands and I drove a florist’s delivery truck for my day job. In the same shopping center was a music store whose owner, Mori Elder, knew me. My first drum set had come from his shop about five years earlier and I often spent my lunch break shooting the bull with him; he was a drummer, too, and about 65. Saturday evening I got off work and stopped to see Mori; he closed at 5:00 but we talked until I left about 6:00. Monday AM my first delivery run was to go put a casket spray on Mori - he nevr made it home that night and his wife came up to the store ~6:30 and found him dead of a heart attack.

Bleh.

18

That’s too bad. Sadly, many fatal crashes (and fortunately there aren’t that many of them) leave the victims in an unidentifiable state. In 1979 I was on my way to Fox airport where my dad was working in the FAA. Bill Barnes, the son of the famous aviatrix “Pancho” Barnes, was going to be flying his P-51 “Mustang” in formation with an F4U “Corsair” and a B-29. I was going to shoot some footage with my super-8 movie camera. As I neared the airport, I saw a plume of black smoke directly north of it. I thought at the time that it didn’t look good. When I got to Flight Service where dad was on duty, I found out that Bill had crashed. I found out the smallest part of the airplane was very small indeed. I didn’t see Bill’s body, or that of his mechanic who was in the seat that took the place of the fuselage fuel tank, but the crash was so horrific I shudder to think of the state of their corpses.
The thing that really freaked me out though, was that I had just talked to Bill a couple of days before.

I had just started working data on the B-1 project when the first B-1A crashed, taking the life of Rockwell test pilot Doug Benefield. As I drove to the hangar after the crash, I saw Benefield’s Porsche 924 in the parking lot. Waiting for him to drive it home. I thought it was spooky. I never met Benefield.

The only other person I knew who died in a plane crash was a local doctor who gave my dad his FAA flight physicals. (I went to a different FAA certified medical examiner.) He did something stupid one day and crashed. Unfortunately he took two people with him. The doctor and his passengers, a couple of photographers from New Zealand, survived the crash but were “burned beyond recognition” (see Thomas Wolf’s The Right Stuff – the book – to find out what that really means.) in the post-crash fire.

19

Ugh, porcupine, I’m sorry!

I was up late chatting about a week ago when I heard shots right outside my apartment. My roommate heard them too - they woke her out of a dead sleep. I got away from the windows and debated calling the police when I heard the sirens. Does anyone know where they publish crime statistics in Chicago? The Washington Post would have frequent crime reports in the Metro section, but I haven’t been able to find anything similar here. I’d like to find out what happened.

My college boyfriend rowed crew at Georgetown. One morning, they came across a floating corpse. That’s about as close as I’ve been.

20

Almost four years ago- January 1997- my girlfriend, another friend, and I were broadsided by a SUV. We were in a relatively rural area in northern Minnesota, and the paramedics from the local hospital were unable to keep my girlfriend alive for the forty minutes it took for a helicopter from the level one trauma center at North Memorial in Minneapolis to get up there.

I watched her die in the car; I only had a minor cut on my right temple about a half-inch long from flying glass. Survivor’s guilt took a long time to get over.

Still depresses me.

People can bleed for such a long time before dying…

aw, fuckit.