A little too close to home

a shooting at my CTA station

12/28/2011 12:03 PM

By Bonnie McGrath

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It was just hours since I'd read about the Amish teenager who was driving her carriage in Amish land and got shot dead. It turns out a man over a mile away shot his gun off whie cleaning it, and the bullet travelled unobstructed all that way and got her. An accident. Couldn't happen here, I thought.


And Monday night, it was just a couple minutes before the alleged gang-related shooting on the Orange/Green Line tracks at Roosevelt and State that I walked under those same tracks, on the way to a yoga class, no less. I could have been killed. Gang bangers aren't exactly reputed to be sure shots who aim to get their enemies and only their get enemies. They aren't exactly like old-fashioned gangsters--who would never get into a shooting situation where they killed a child or an innocent bystander or a family member of the target.

In any case, what if I'd been on the tracks? Which I am constantly, going here and there. What if I'd been next to the victim? And they missed him and hit me? And what if that bullet had gone under the tracks when I was going under?

These questions keep preying on my mind. Amidst the festivities, the dinners, the shopping and the fun during the last week of the year, the week between Christmas and New Year's.


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