crime capital

no, we haven't actually become the capital of crime, although my friend L. apparently thinks so: she says there's no way she's walking around in town at night anymore, and even driving will be with all doors locked. i find it very silly...

what happened is that over the weekend, we had our first (well, i suppose it was, cos i've never heard of it happening before) gunpoint mugging, which unfortunately actually resulted in someone's death. a security agent was picking up the day's earnings at a petrol station (although why he was doing this at 1.30am is completely beyond me), when he was attacked. they killed him, took the money, and then killed the dog. i heard the shots. i'd just got home myself when i heard the first one. i thought i should call the police to let them know, but then i thought i must have misheard. gun shots, in this little town? didn't make sense. when i then heard a second one, a few minutes later, i thought it was a car exhaust exploding or something, cos it made even less sense to me why there'd be an interval between the shots. but, as i found out on this morning, it was very real.

apparently, we were even on national tv news. not that i saw it, but L. did, and explained that the guy who called the police was our old school supervisor, who now owns the local cinema, across from the petrol station where the whole thing happened.

on the one hand, i feel terrible, not only about the fact this happened, but also about the fact that we've apparently reached the time when things like these will become common place. despite Geneva being really near, we'd been kind of safe until now. on the other hand, i can only cynically say that it was bound to happen and we should just consider ourselves lucky not to have had this before.