My neighbor was murdered by his son, execution style, because he refused to cough up money for the boy and his friend to buy drugs.
My Tae Kwon Do instructor. He was dating a woman that had a psycho ex-husband that tried to make trouble, and the instructor beat the living snot out of the guy. After psycho recovered from the ass whupping, he came back with an AK-47, cut my instructor in half one bullet at a time, them shot himself for good measure.
VWife’s previous boyfriend was shot and killed during a hold-up, but I didn’t know either one at the time.
I don’t even keep track any more of students and former students who are murder victims or murderers. After you get into the double digits, it’s too depressing to dwell on.
My dad’s best friend was killed in a mob hit. He was sitting in his car in the parking lot of his country club, and the hitman walked up behind him, stuck a pistol through the open driver’s side window, and blew his brains out. They didn’t catch the people responsible until decades later. (My Dad’s friend wasn’t involved in anything illegal. They killed him because he discovered them skimming from a business he owned and was going to blow the whistle on them.)
My godfather was murdered in a murder-suicide by his business partner. I don’t remember him very well.
Somewhat Related, my next door neighbor when I was about 10-12 yrs old (he was the same age as me), is serving a life sentence for multiple murders. Kind of creeps me out when I think about it.
A woman who I used to work with was shot by her husband in a murder-suicide. The situation was made more sad in that it was done in the presence of their nine-year-old daughter.
A college friend and her four-year-old daughter were murdered by drug dealers looking for her boyfriend.
A few years ago, a guy who used to hang out with my friend group was knifed to death in a bar fight.
When I still lived in Nashville, my neighbor two doors down was stabbed to death in a domestic incident.
I hope against hope that this is the extent of my list for the rest of my life.
While I am sorry for your loss, I hesitate to call the killing of a soldier in a war zone a murder.
Three, two friends and a coworker.
Were you teaching in a juvenile detention facility?
No. I just have been teaching in a very rough area for a long time.
A guy I associated with years ago was shotgunned while sitting in his recliner. I don’t know about being a buddy; he was very volatile and would be your buddy one minute and turn on you the next.
A few people, but one stands out. Twenty years ago I worked in a printing shop in Reno Nevada. When I wanted a candy bar I’d go out the back and across the alley to a hole-in-the-wall Rexall Drug. The cashier was a small woman in her sixties, with a dull red rinse hairstyle from thirty years earlier. She was like a great many old people you see in the cities: having to work at small jobs well past the age of retirement, marginalized socially, television and a small pet for companionship. This world granted her only a little, and even that was taken away when she was murdered by a burglar. All these years later, I wonder if I’m the only person who remembers she was ever alive.
Your touching story reminds me of one I had almost forgotten. A “corner market” near where I live now used to be a regular “beer stop” for me and the night cashier was a cute, petite Asian woman who was always cheerful and friendly and engaging with every customer. Her English was good enough that she even enjoyed some of my jokes.
She was found early one morning in the back room on the floor with a bullet wound to her head. I don’t know if a culprit was ever found. I quit going to that store after that.
Don’t know anyone who was murdered by others, and I am thankful for that, but I knew three suicides, self-murderers. Two were high school classmates, one a relative.
May you who grieve be comforted.
This thread is absolutely jaw dropping. I guess I live a very sheltered life here in my little town in the heart of Old Europe.
I don’t know anybody who has been murdered and I have never met anybody who knew somebody who has been murdered or would have heard about such an incident.
I am almost certain that there hasn’t been a single murder in my town (pop. 30,000) in the last 60 years. A few suicides, but definitely no murder.
The father of a school friend of mine hanged himself when we were in 10th grade. But that is about as dramatic as it gets.
As an aside, manner of explanation really, for how this idea came to my mind, gruesome as it is, an earlier thread dealing with pop music made me remember a guy I used to work with being somehow responsible for its creation and how that guy worked directly with the friend who was murdered (with his wife) by their son. Click, click, click: this thread.
So many of the threads I have started have worked that way. Chain reaction sorts of things. Maybe that idea of how threads come to be is worth another thread in itself? Maybe not…
Donnerwetter, don’t think this is representative at all. I have lived all over the US for 50 years without knowing anyone who was murdered.
My husband’s co-worker’s two kids were murdered by her ex-husband, who then killed himself. I haven’t known anyone personally who’s been murdered, though.
Wow, this is disturbing. Of course, it is not a scientific poll, and also how much of it is one of those “7 degrees” things I can’t say. If so, it shows that one horrendous act has a long reach.
I did lose a friend to a vicious murder. His wife and my wife were close friends; I was never enough of a sports nut too be super tight with him. He was the sports editor of our local paper. He would feed a cat in the parking lot every night before leaving work, and while doing so, two men approached and brutally bludgeoned him to death with a heavy object.
Ditto, though only 40 years. In a major metropolitan area for the last 20 years.