Monday, December 9, 2019

Try not to look like an idiot on TV

I thought those guys would get arrested for sure.

There was a murder here about twenty years ago. The victim was in his 20's and shared a house with several friends who were long haired---I don't know if they were goths, exactly. But they called the TV station to send a camera crew out. This probably wasn't a wise move when they were potential suspects in an unsolved murder. The obviously fake sobbing didn't help. It was like they had never seen anyone on TV talk about someone's death before. 

I assumed they were the murderers, but police arrested someone else later.

Another time, there was a live report on local TV. Police had surrounded a house. A young man inside had written a suicide note, stuck it to the front door with a knife and began firing a .22 rifle out the window. His roommates appeared outside. They were smiling and laughing as they told reporters that they had been off somewhere when they turned on a TV, saw the stand-off, and realized it was their house! Their friend was inside going through a psychotic breakdown and was about to kill himself, and they thought the shooting and the SWAT team gave it a carnival atmosphere. 

They were just on TV for a few seconds on the 5 o'clock news. I thought I recognized one of them. He looked like a guy a knew slightly, a "friend" of a friend. He was truly the dumbest person I've ever met so it would have been completely in character.

I called a friend.

"I think I just saw John ________ on the news!" I told him to watch the news at 11:00.

Later he called me and said, no, it looked like him but it wasn't him.

That was at least thirty years ago. I'm sure those guys have lived it down by now. 

I googled John ________ and found he had died a few years ago. I was shocked that he had been a successful news photographer. He died of a heart attack while on assignment in Southeast Asia. 

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