Cumbrian Killings

On the morning and early afternoon of Wednesday June 2nd 2010 a local taxi driver, Derrick Bird, killed 12 people before taking his own life. No doubt everybody has either seen the TV footage, heard about it on the radio, read about it in the newspapers or seen the reports on the variety of news websites that have covered the story. I don't know why he did it or the reason for targetting the people he did. And, I'm not going to speculate on either.

I was pretty oblivious to the events that unfolded until early afternoon. With it being half-term and the main hall at work being used that day I had arranged to take that day off and run the Junior Club on Friday instead. As a result, I had got up, got washed etc, grabbed some breakfast and came back upstairs to play on the XBox. It wasn't until about 1:45pm that I knocked the XBox off and switched over to wacth some TV. I had planned to watch 'Going Postal'; the latest Terry Pratchett adaption from Sky, which I am going to finally get around to watching this evening.

It was rather surreal watching the events unfold in the local area. West Cumbria isn't one of those places that you associate with any kind of major crime; let alone a murderous rampage which ending up leaving 12 people dead.

I had some concern with the safety of a friend of mine who lives in one of the flats just above the Duke Street taxi-rank where the killings appeared to begin; although we later learnt that they had started much earlier and quite some distance away in Lamplugh. High Trees, Lamplugh was a place I had spent a considerable number of weekends at whilst growing up. A schoolfriend lived out there and we used to play tabletop games such as Car Wars and Illuminati there. I'm not totally sure but I think his parents may still live out there. Thankfully, he posted on Facebook that they were safe. And I recived a texted reply from my friend who lives on Duke Street to say that he was at college and was nowhere near the danger.

Whilst it's true to say that people in the local area tend to know each other; for example, one of the people I work with knew 3 or 4 of the victims and the gunman too, I realised that I didn't know any of the victims; or so I thought! As Wednesday ended I saw a post by one of my cousin's kids that people were saying her Grandad was one of the victims. Unfortunately, by the time I got home from work on Thursday it had been confirmed that one of the victims was indeed my cousin's former father-in-law, and her kids' Grandad.

It also transpires that one of my neighbours from a few doors away was also shot. Bird had apparently beckoned him over to ask for directions or something. He'd seen the gun at the last second and turned away but was shot in the back. He's now out of hospital but will need to go back a couple of times.

I know people would normally say that their thoughts and prayers go out to all the people affected by this. However, being an atheist all I can do is offer my condolences to all the people who have lost loved ones and offer my wishes of speedy recovery to the surviving victims.

Finally, I would hope that this awful incident doesn't end up stopping people holidaying/visiting here; West Cumbria is a beautiful place to visit and a nice, quiet place to live.