Aparently this story was national news for a bit.
A local student, Michelle Gardner-Quinn, was walking back to campus late last Friday night after spending the night out at the bars, and never made it home.
Her body was found a few days later about 20 miles out of town.
The prime suspect is a guy whose phone she borrowed that night because hers had lost its charge. He’s been arrested on some unrelated charges of sexual misconduct with a minor.
Today’s paper has an article about her memorial service, but there are links from that article to all the previous coverage, if you’re curious.
Now, I don’t know why exactly, but this story has hit me pretty hard.
I didn’t know Michelle at all. But, this sort of thing is a very unusual occurance in Burlington. People have been killed here before, some rather recently. They always seem to be drug-deal-related incidents, or people killing people they know (quarrels and so forth). This seems (so far) to have been completely random; a crime of oportunity only.
Michelle was walking home, happened to ask the wrong person to borrow his cell phone, and that was it.
This was basically my back yard. Burlington is a small city. I very well could have been walking home on that same street that same night. We might have even been in the same bar at one point that evening. The place where the suspect claims he last saw Michelle is on the corner, two houses from an old apartment of mine, and across the street from the middle and elementary schools where my girlfriend works.
The body was found about a mile from another old apartment of mine, where I lived for a year and a half, and walked frequently.
I’m not sure what it is. Tragedy happens all around. Almost all of the time I am able to view it with distance and perspective. Somehow this story has got me really upset. This is my town; my back yard. Some guy picked a woman at random and murdered her on my turf.
So, I don’t know; read the article I guess. This is a woman who probably knew people I know, who was kidnapped and murdered by a stranger about a 10 minute walk from my house.