Went out for a walk at lunch yesterday and walked down Rundle Mall past the Myer Centre and saw a couple of police cars parked in the middle of the Mall and thought there must be something going on. Didn’t think anything of it and when I was buying some hair products the staff started talking about the shooting that had occurred a little while ago at the Myer Centre. That explained the police cars.
It turned out that a 69 year old man had gone into the Myer store and shot his estranged wife in front of other staff and customers. She was taken away to hospital but died not long after arrival.
On my way back to work I walked down North Terrace and saw all the other police vehicles and of course the news vehicles.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Did this couple have any children, but how as a family – whether there are children or not – would you cope with a situation like that? What about the grandchildren? How are the colleagues coping, especially the ones who witnessed the whole thing. They probably won’t want to go back to work again.
It makes me think that apart from the sensation we hear on the news about events like this, we don’t find out much about what went on around the climactic event. The Australian ABC television show Australian Story does delve into the stories and give an account of what lead up to the 6 o’clock news event and what happened after to the people involved and the one thing that shines through in their stories is how people cope with trauma and how they deal with it. I guess they don’t show the stories of where, overall, people don’t cope with trauma, but where they do and it’s usually inspiring to us mere mortals who hopefully don’t have to deal with too much.
As they say though, life goes on and a friend came around to my place last night and announced her pregnancy.
