The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes

I was reading today about how an innocent young man came to be killed, in front of a cluster of stunned commuters, by those whose job it was to protect him. The more I read, the more I had the creeping sensation that this wasn’t something of our world. So many factors coming together, at just the wrong time, resulting in a tragedy that is too awful. There is something almost primeval about what happened, and how it happened, like it was the sport of cruel and ancient gods.

An address book, a police force roused by the death of innocents, a thick coat worn by a foreigner used to hotter climes, the shadow of failed bombs, the wrong reaction to a shout to stop, a decision made in split-second. The young man from Brazil meets the policeman who pulls the trigger. Someone put that together and it wasn’t anyone human.

January lst year when Britain froze over and came to a virtual standstill for 24 hours, I was involved in a resonating tragedy. A coach got stuck in the ice in central London. All the passengers had to get off. A girl went to the train station, but was directed to the wrong station platform and missed the last train. Drunken men accosted her on the station platform. A smart professional-looking man came to her rescue. She went back with him to his hotel room. He killed her. A girl from America met the man who had gone out that night intent on murder.

I was the one who had to write the coach company’s defence that her murder was not their fault. I managed, I think, not to use the actual words “unfortunate circumstances,” but that was what I tried to impart.

“Unfortunate circumstances” doesn’t cut it though when someone loses their life in such an unfair and monstrous way. It feels like a price must be paid. We don’t know by whom, or how, or to what end, but such a death cannot seemingly pass without retribution. In the case of Mr de Menezes, some are baying for the blood of the police, some say he’s another victim of the 7/7 bombers, some blame Tony Blair and Iraq. We would like this sad loss of life to make a difference somehow, to change something. It should rightly horrify us that it won’t. When the rest of us have moved onto the next chapter in this apocalyptic tale, the de Menezes family will be left with this alone.

The world in which we live has been blasted and the shards are flying everywhere. Hug and kiss those you love tonight, and hold them tight.