Have you ever known somebody who was murdered? How did you handle that?

Not a big city or a big crime city, so this was a big deal. I didn't know the victim, I did know (albeit not very well) the family though.

In HS I had a technical theater class with a teacher known only as "Barb". One day in this class there were a few kids crying because someone had been missing for a few days. Barb was concerned, but it wasn't someone I went to school with. I just went about my day. Then shit kept happening: a body had been found (the missing person), people arrested, the accused ended up blaming each other, Fred Phelps demonstrated at our school and the service... It seemed a bit unreal. Not a huge town, one middle school, one high school, so most people are just a few degrees of separation even when they didn't know each other. It was just weird with the victim and their family, the perps and their families - like what do you do while your son is in jail for murder? Just go to the store like nothing happened and hope you don't see anyone who knows you? Anyway, I digress.

Barb was tight with her kids some and some of them were tight with the victim. Barb was helping deal with the aftermath, and we repeatedly had a sub on and off. Now, they knew the Phelps crew was going to be at the service. But like Liam Neeson, Barb had spent her entire life acquiring a particular set of skills. She literally had spent +3 decades building functional sets and props for use in live performances. So they built these tall angel wings that could be worn and spread. At the service they made a line around the Phelps folks and spread those wings to block them so that people could attend the service largely unmolested. I think that's why we had a sub for so many of those days.

tl;dr: Sad day, Westboro baptist church sucks, and Barb rocks.

Also somewhat relevant, in chronological order:

In elementary school one of my schoolmates was raped and killed. Was kind of hard to really wrap my head around at the time, but I understood enough to get the rape part even then. The "why" question stayed with me, probably because I couldn't get a real answer from an adult.

Another kid who I actually was good friends with died in a suspicious accident. All I know is that he was in the back of a pickup truck and they were supposedly being chased by another car. He had just moved, so we had said our goodbyes and all, but still, it wasn't that kind of goodbye.

Another kid I went to elementary and middle school was shot and killed by... another kid I went to high school with. The perp was older than me, one of my siblings knew him better than I did. I wasn't tight with either of them. More than anything, it was just strange feeling that someone you had known, seen, talked to, interacted with... was just gone.

The star running back on my (older) brother's HS football team was killed a year or two after graduating, supposedly up to no good. While I was a senior in HS, a younger student hung himself. That one was a little rough; they always give the seniors this spiel about not doing anything foolish after some seniors died in a train/car accident several years ago (actually the graduating class of the my brother/RB) and how it put this dark cloud over the whole graduation thing. So then a younger student was dead, and in some ways that was worse.

Last one: I won't post the news article out of respect to the deceased and my connection to this situation. In college a girl in my class was killed by her father. Apparently he had been committing fraud and (around 2008 ish) shit hit the fan. Instead of facing the music he killed his entire family, then himself. I transferred from the university the summer after it happened. I actually worked for the school, and the last thing I ever did for that job was show her room to some extended family (as no immediate family remained). Apparently her roommate(s?) moved out after the murders, not being able to sleep there. All her stuff was left untouched for months, frozen in time from the week she was killed. The school didn't know what to do with the stuff, they thought the extended family would take it. But the relatives didn't know what to do with it either. I helped them load up what they decided to take, but it wasn't much.

I've got a few more, but they are mostly of family and of the "play stupid games, get stupid prizes" variety. Plus that's enough for the evening.

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