I've covered a number of homicides, and when I arrive at a crime scene, I usually find one of two situations: If the crime just happened, I generally find an area cordoned off with police tape and crawling with officers. If it's the day after a killing, I normally find a quiet street with little evidence of the recent tragedy.
When I arrived on Stanford Avenue on Tuesday morning, more than 12 hours had transpired since someone gunned down Victor Navarro, 33, of Santa Barbara, and seriously wounded another man about 7:20 p.m. Monday.
This was one of those cases where the scene of the crime held few reminders of the terrible thing that transpired there.
One of my colleagues had been there the night before, but he didn't get much information because the whole area was blocked off and called a crime scene.
I pulled up about 9 a.m.
Cars lined Stanford Avenue, a residential street of single-family homes. The street was tidy and the houses looked well cared for. One house had pinwheels near the front door. Several had political signs on their lawns.
There were no police cars, and no crime tape. No obvious stains on the asphalt.
The only obvious reminder of the shooting was a series of orange markings on the ground, the kind police use during their investigations.
The small orange lines lined up with the wheels of many cars near the scene of the crime.
I talked to a few neighbors. Some said they didn't know anything about what happened. One said she heard shots but didn't want to give her name because she was afraid.
A reporter from a Spanish-language news television channel was on scene with a cameraman. We chatted about what we'd heard then went our sort of separate ways, interviewing people briefly as they stopped their cars to see what we wanted. Then I continued wandering, talking to people who happened to be around.
I heard a few rumors but few facts.
Some neighbors said the shooting shocked them. A few said the neighborhood was usually quiet. Some disagreed.
A few bits of information I gathered at the scene helped me frame my questions to police.
Reflecting back on the 90 minutes or so I spent at the scene of the crime, I have to say I found what I expected to find, which wasn't too much.
It feels strange, almost disrespectful, to say the scene of a killing was average, but this one seemed to be, at least from a reporter's perspective at the moment I was there.
Murders change everything for the family and friends of the victim. Some victims' families return frequently to the scene of their loved one's death as part of their grieving.
But if the scene of this crime told a story, it was ethereal.
The scene spoke of the fear violence inspires; of the challenge of learning what really happened, and why; of the vulnerability of human life...
When I arrived on Stanford Avenue on Tuesday morning, more than 12 hours had transpired since someone gunned down Victor Navarro, 33, of Santa Barbara, and seriously wounded another man about 7:20 p.m. Monday.
This was one of those cases where the scene of the crime held few reminders of the terrible thing that transpired there.
One of my colleagues had been there the night before, but he didn't get much information because the whole area was blocked off and called a crime scene.
I pulled up about 9 a.m.
Cars lined Stanford Avenue, a residential street of single-family homes. The street was tidy and the houses looked well cared for. One house had pinwheels near the front door. Several had political signs on their lawns.
There were no police cars, and no crime tape. No obvious stains on the asphalt.
The only obvious reminder of the shooting was a series of orange markings on the ground, the kind police use during their investigations.
The small orange lines lined up with the wheels of many cars near the scene of the crime.
I talked to a few neighbors. Some said they didn't know anything about what happened. One said she heard shots but didn't want to give her name because she was afraid.
A reporter from a Spanish-language news television channel was on scene with a cameraman. We chatted about what we'd heard then went our sort of separate ways, interviewing people briefly as they stopped their cars to see what we wanted. Then I continued wandering, talking to people who happened to be around.
I heard a few rumors but few facts.
Some neighbors said the shooting shocked them. A few said the neighborhood was usually quiet. Some disagreed.
A few bits of information I gathered at the scene helped me frame my questions to police.
Reflecting back on the 90 minutes or so I spent at the scene of the crime, I have to say I found what I expected to find, which wasn't too much.
It feels strange, almost disrespectful, to say the scene of a killing was average, but this one seemed to be, at least from a reporter's perspective at the moment I was there.
Murders change everything for the family and friends of the victim. Some victims' families return frequently to the scene of their loved one's death as part of their grieving.
But if the scene of this crime told a story, it was ethereal.
The scene spoke of the fear violence inspires; of the challenge of learning what really happened, and why; of the vulnerability of human life...
