Monday, September 15, 2008

Power came back on at the station today. Thank God. Was an easy day up until the evening time when a strange call came in over the radio. Someone called saying a neighbor kid fell down the stairs severing his head. We all had to do a double take on that one. Was it one of those dumb SAW movies? What the hell was going on? By the time I arrive the parents are in the front yard screaming. Obviously upset and in shock that their son is dead. Well, the mother was still in denial. She was screaming at us. She didn't need us, she needed an ambulance. One of the first responders whispered to me "he's dead! He didn't fall down any stairs neither!" I walk into the house and see a dead teenager with the top half of his head gone. Fell down the stairs my ass. We separate the family, start working like it's a homicide. Both parents deny there are any guns in the house. I go upstairs and into a bedroom where I find brain matter, a large pool of blood, and a shotgun! Just as I suspected, the kid ate a shotgun. The father blamed their power outage. I sensed I wasn't getting the whole story. I asked if his son had been acting unusual, depressed, etc. Later on the father admitted the son announced he was thinking of killing himself, but the family dismissed it as crazy talk. He also acknowledged that there was a shotgun in the house that the kid had access to. I wonder if the detective will try to do something with that. I don't think the parents were outright neglectful, I think they were ostriches. Their method of dealing with problems was to stick their heads in the sand. Good Lord!