Murder down the road

Seeing it in print this morning still hasn't helped it sink in. A murder has occurred within the past 40 hours, not even half a mile down the road. In fact, the article in this morning's Spokesman-Review (http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=86501) indicates it's the first murder committed in Sandpoint in at least five years.

We, in the neighborhood, must now wait and wonder if we can feel safe. Maybe it was a situation involving a conflict between two people who knew each other. Maybe the police leads will mean that the murderer is caught quickly. Maybe it's a random murder. Kinda scary not knowing the circumstances. Maybe we'll feel more at ease once more information comes out. For now, it's pretty unsettling.

Our first clue that something was amiss occurred yesterday morning when Bill came in from feeding his pheasants. He said he was sure he'd heard a gunshot over east of the airport. Within seconds, we heard sirens. Then, an ambulance, followed by a police car, raced by, headed south. We turned on the scanner but heard nothing for the next few minutes.

Later, when Bill went to church, he saw a fire truck and a cop car near Evergreen Towing, where the murder occurred. When he came home two hours later, the business was cordoned off, five police cars lined the road and a law officer was talking to our longtime neighbor Karen. When he arrived home, Bill asked me if I had learned anything about what had happened at Evergreen Towing. Since I'd been working in the barnyard all morning, I hadn't.

So, I called Karen who lives no more than 50 feet from the crime scene. All she knew was that the cops wondered if she'd heard any shots during the night and that there was a body next door. I told her about Bill hearing the shot in the morning. Later, a cop came down and asked for more details. He then told us that what Bill heard was unrelated because the body had already been discovered by then.

I was glad to hear that Karen has her two 20-something boys at home with her. They're both state champion wrestlers, so she should be pretty safe while Simon works away from town in St. Maries. I thought about if this event had happened a week ago when Bill was away on a fire and knew that nobody'd catch me staying in this house by myself.

As the police chief said in today's article, a lot of people are moving in, and not all of them want to play together. It's a sad state of affairs that keeps adding up quickly in our Best Small Community in the West. Last week, while doing some interviewing, I heard resounding comments from several other longtime residents lamenting the new influx of people who won't even look at you, let alone smile when they meet you on the street or even on our country roads.

Now, this morning, we're dealing with a newer, more disturbing dimension of the seemingly instant erosion of the friendly and wholesome nature of our hometown. Sadly it's just down our road.