Friday, March 28, 2008

I-64 Shootings

You know, I live in a small town in the Shenandoah Valley and occasionally go to Charlottesville, VA (home of the University of VA). The picture to the left is looking into the valley from I-64 on Afton Mountain. I was in Charlottesville on Wednesday for the Festival of the Book and drove over Afton Mountain to come home that evening. It was a beautiful day, with plentiful sunshine and the temperature almost reached 80 degrees.

That peaceful feeling was shaken Thursday morning when I heard about the I-64 shootings. That kind of thing just doesn't happen here. How often do we hear that? But, its true of this area. I think that's how we all felt when the tragedy happened at Virginia Tech - which is about 125 miles from here.

Friday morning, there was a news cast that a 19 year old had been arrested and Friday evening CNN Headline news announced that a 15 year old had also been arrested -- two young people are facing 10 felony counts. That is so sad and pathetic. I don't usually comment about these things, but events that hit the national news don't usually happen 20-30 minutes from my home and they usually don't happen where I drove the previous day.

I just have to wrap up by saying kudos to the local law enforcement which did a fantastic job with a very tense situation and I'm looking forward to driving that route early in the morning to another day of the Festival of the Book.

Nikki Leigh

1 comment:

Donna Sundblad said...

What a beautiful picture. It reminds of that saying--if a tree fell in the forest and no one was there would it make a sound? If someone shot a gun would all those traveling hear it? Just scary. Things like this are never to happen near home.

Donna

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