I was supposed to go to Yankee Stadium last Friday, to cover the first exhibition game. Instead, I was sent to Binghamton, to cover a mass shooting. From one American pastime, to another that’s becoming all-too-frequent.
Cameraman Jim Sabastian and I jumped into a truck and headed north.
“It’s gonna be bad,” Jim said.
“Ten, maybe 12,” I answered shorthand for a gruesome death toll.
“Probably more,” Jim said, and added, “He might be unemployed. And, look at that center. He could be an immigrant.
I just nodded. I do not ask Jim how he knows these things before anyone else. I just know, Jim’s usually right.
Maybe because he’s been there before. Not Binghamton, but Columbine. And Wendy’s. And, the Long Island Rail Road. And Palm Sunday. Moreover, a few hundred other not-so-famous horrors. A carnival of carnage, that plays in cities big and small, but mostly small.
I’ve been there too. The D.C. Sniper. Virginia Tech. Oh, and Wendy’s and the LIRR too. Always a madman followed by a lawman, followed by convoy of TV live trucks.
Binghamton is a dreary little town with a University and little else. You wouldn’t call it down-on-your-luck, because it probably never had any. It’s most famous native is Rod Serling. So I guess we should have expected a visit from the Twilight Zone.
Jim and I arrived and quickly did our first live shot. “Fourteen dead. The gunman was just laid off,” I said on Fox Five News. “The gunman was a Vietnamese immigrant.” Jim just kept on working. He never said, “I told you so.”
Somebody said there would be a Vigil at 7 p.m. It seems these tragedies have become so frequent; towns just know how to react. And, people just know what to say. “We need time to heal,” someone told me.
There are those who HAVEN’T been here before. A cop on the street screamed at me to get on the sidewalk because “you might get hit.” Get hit by what? The street was closed. Moreover, the gunman was long dead.
As the bodies were taken out of the American Civic Association on Front Street, I noticed the yellow crime scene tape flapping in the wind, the international symbol of insanity. I flashed back to Virginia Tech. I remember one of the most beautiful universities in the country, tucked away in the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains, safe from the world … and then, in the heart of the campus, a dorm draped in crime scene tape.
Suddenly, reality in the form of a siren interrupted my awful reminiscence. This time I WAS going to get hit. I made room for another coroner’s van, and I thought about those 13 people, in citizenship class. Were they learning about the second amendment, the one about the right to bear arms?
But, hold it right there. They’ll be no preaching from me that “guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people," No, the gun debate is above my pay grade.
I’ve never fired a gun and have no desire to. Growing up in Queens, we never went duck hunting. And, the only time I probably wanted a gun was in New Orleans, when the law was long gone, and the looters ruled the night.
In these shootings, we hear that the gunman usually “wants to go out in a blaze of glory.” Now, I see Jiverly Wong decided he wanted his posthumous 15 minutes of fame, mailing his twisted manifesto and hoping someone would actually make sense of it. Nobody will.
I know their will be another day when Jim and I jump into a live truck, and head toward hell. And, Jim will say, “It’s gonna be bad.” And I’ll nod, stare straight ahead, and say to myself, “Jim’s usually right.”
