Not trying to make homelessness a theme of this blog, but....
I was out this evening making a run to drop off some movies at Blockbuster and pick up a few things at the grocery store. Our house is about 2 blocks off a major road (Gallatin Road for you locals) and from there, just about everything is within a few blocks, so I hadn't driven far. We can easily walk to the grocery store, drug stores, take out places, etc., if we want.
On the return trip, there is a swarm of blue lights. I counted no less than 13 police cars, plus an ambulance and a fire truck. The road is blocked off in both directions. I pull into the parking lot of the strip mall where the Blockbuster is located and drop off my movies. Down the street, I see a crowd of spectators gathered in the parking lot. While I'm doing the obligatory return-the-DVD loop through the in and out doors of the Blockbuster (What's the deal with that anyway? Do they really think I'm such an impulse buyer that I can't make that loop through the store without renting something else?), I ask the teenager behind the counter what happened outside.
"Homeless guy got hit by an SUV."
Whoa. That seems to sum it up. You can guess who wins that contest.
I walked across the parking lot and got the news confirmed from some of the people milling around out there. There were cops everywhere. Apart from parking their cars to block off the road, I don't see many of them doing anything but standing around like the rest of us. One cop has a spray can and is walking around all the scattered detritus and spraying circles around where it all ended up. There must have been a crumpled grocery cart somewhere because there is just so much stuff spread all over somebody couldn't have been carrying it all.
I don't know if the pedestrian was killed or not. He must have been carted off already. It's hard to imagine anyone walking away from that unscathed. I call him a pedestrian'cause I feel guilty summing it up that way: Homeless guy vs. SUV. But on my way back across the parking lot to my car, two or three drivers who have pulled into the lot to turn around and try to find a way around the road block ask me what happened and like the teenager I say "homeless guy got hit by an SUV."
What else can you say?
I was out this evening making a run to drop off some movies at Blockbuster and pick up a few things at the grocery store. Our house is about 2 blocks off a major road (Gallatin Road for you locals) and from there, just about everything is within a few blocks, so I hadn't driven far. We can easily walk to the grocery store, drug stores, take out places, etc., if we want.
On the return trip, there is a swarm of blue lights. I counted no less than 13 police cars, plus an ambulance and a fire truck. The road is blocked off in both directions. I pull into the parking lot of the strip mall where the Blockbuster is located and drop off my movies. Down the street, I see a crowd of spectators gathered in the parking lot. While I'm doing the obligatory return-the-DVD loop through the in and out doors of the Blockbuster (What's the deal with that anyway? Do they really think I'm such an impulse buyer that I can't make that loop through the store without renting something else?), I ask the teenager behind the counter what happened outside.
"Homeless guy got hit by an SUV."
Whoa. That seems to sum it up. You can guess who wins that contest.
I walked across the parking lot and got the news confirmed from some of the people milling around out there. There were cops everywhere. Apart from parking their cars to block off the road, I don't see many of them doing anything but standing around like the rest of us. One cop has a spray can and is walking around all the scattered detritus and spraying circles around where it all ended up. There must have been a crumpled grocery cart somewhere because there is just so much stuff spread all over somebody couldn't have been carrying it all.
I don't know if the pedestrian was killed or not. He must have been carted off already. It's hard to imagine anyone walking away from that unscathed. I call him a pedestrian'cause I feel guilty summing it up that way: Homeless guy vs. SUV. But on my way back across the parking lot to my car, two or three drivers who have pulled into the lot to turn around and try to find a way around the road block ask me what happened and like the teenager I say "homeless guy got hit by an SUV."
What else can you say?
posted by valis at 7:18 PM
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