Anytime Anywhere Anyone
When I look out the windows of the school I work at, I see a quiet part of town, a residential area just outside of the city.
I see a part of town that is busy in the mornings and evenings with students and businessmen commuting to and from school and work on foot and by bike.
I see a part of town that, except for the laughter of children coming from schools and the soft voices of mothers drifting through the air, is generally quiet.
I see a place where, for the most part, nothing out of the ordinary ever happens.
May 7, 3:00 P.M.:
A seven-year-old girl is saying goodbye to friends at a train crossing. She is turning to walk down the slightly narrow street that leads to her house. The sky is blue and her house is just out of sight, slightly more than 300 meters ahead of her.
The muffled sound of a train can be heard in the distance, coming down the tracks that parallel her street.
Sometimes unthinkable things happen.
When I first came to this school in April, it was so vibrant. The students were brimming with energy. The teachers were positive and upbeat. The hallways and classrooms were full of life and laughter.
May 7, 4:20 P.M.:
A phone is ringing at a school. A girl’s mother is calling to say that her daughter hasn’t arrived home yet.
Sometimes, on ordinary days, the world as we know it changes forever.
When I look out the windows of the school where I work, the front windows that overlook the school parking lot and the school’s main entrance, I see media vans and news cameras waiting on the other side of the street, just beyond the school’s front gate. I see police officers standing guard and patrolling the school grounds. I see a hoard of parents standing in the parking lot. They have come to walk their children home.
May 7, 5:00 P.M.:
A girl’s mother is calling the police. School officials have informed her that her daughter is no longer at school.
Sometimes the things that we find unfathomable are much nearer to us than we can imagine.
When I come to this school now, it is still vibrant. The students are still brimming with energy. The teachers are still positive and upbeat. The hallways and classrooms are still full of life and laughter. But something isn’t quite the same.
There are strange phone calls flooding the main office. There are investigators in the hallways. There are school counselors that weren’t here before. There is a slight undertone of chaos, a perceivable sense of weariness, a shaky atmosphere of uncertainty.
May 7, 7:30 P.M.:
Police officers are looking for a seven-year old girl who hasn’t come home from school yet.
Sometimes things that aren’t supposed to happen do.
When I look out the back windows of the school, the ones that look out over the tiled roofs of houses in the direction where it happened, reality seems to divide. There are two schools. There are two sets of windows. There are two sets of possibilities. There are two sets of me.
May 7, 10:19 P.M.:
Across the street from a girl’s house, a commuter train is approaching a small station. The night is dark and the tracks are clear.
Sometimes bad things are hiding in plain sight.
When I come to this school now, its vibrancy is both baffling and comforting. On the one hand, I wonder, How can the students be so energetic at a time like this? How can the teachers and parents laugh and smile?
On the other hand, I am reassured and think, Thank God they can.
May 7, 10:29 P.M.:
100 meters from a girl’s house, a train conductor on another train sees a body lying across the train tracks. It is in front of the train that he is driving. He throws on the brakes. But it’s too late.
Sometimes the things we hardly notice, the minutiae of a day, end up haunting us.
When I look out the windows of the school I work at, I see a quiet part of town, a residential area just outside of the city. I see a part of town that is busy in the mornings and evenings with students and businessmen commuting to and from school and work on foot and by bike. I see a part of town that, except for the laughter of children coming from schools and the soft voices of mothers drifting through the air, is generally quiet. I see a place where, for the most part, nothing out of the ordinary happens.
May 7, 11:00 P.M.:
100 meters from a girl’s house, police are examining the scene of an accident. But there are a number of peculiarities that they find suspicious.
Sometimes the questions we have only produce answers and reasons that we can’t understand.
When I come to this school now, I see children, many of them smiling and carrying on as if nothing had ever happened.
I see teachers and faculty working hard, doing what they have to do.
I see reporters, police officers, and parents whose numbers are decreasing little by little everyday.
I see the slightness and fragility of students’ necks, which is something that I had never noticed before.
I see a set of hands that aren’t actually there, squeezing the life out of little bodies.
I see a panic come over everyone in the office whenever there is a phone call that asks about a student’s whereabouts.
There is a silent screaming terror behind every parent's conscious mind that such dark things will never happen to their children... Thank goodness for a good number of them, it stays behind the conscious, but nowadays for too many of them (even one is already too many!) that fear surfaces and comes to reality... :(
That’s a really well put comment. You can only hope that it won’t happen to any of your loved ones.
With kids, I believe one can never be too careful... Thank goodness my niece and nephew are now in their 20s, and yet we still worry for them!
I don’t think the worrying ever goes away;)
These stories happen somewhere around the world everyday. We're so lucky despite these happenings we only hear them
They do happen everyday, and they happen to real people. If they haven’t impacted your life yet, or if you’ve only ever heard them from a distance, you are definitely lucky. It’s a frightening thing.
This was a gripping powerful read. But most of all, sad.
It’s a very sad story. I can’t imagine how this family will move on. If it had been my child, I don’t know if I could keep going.
Sad and senseless. I hope that you and most especially the grieving parents are able to move on from this.
She had a brother too. I don’t know how they’ll be able to move on. It’s horrible. And I can’t imagine what effects it will have on the other young children in the area. At school, they seem fine, and that’s what the teachers are trying to do, promote a safe and fun environment, but outside of school, when they’re walking/playing, I wonder.
Since becoming a parent, I can't read things like this without mentally placing my own kids in the story and picturing it happening to them. It makes what is already difficult to read and think about much much worse. I can't imagine such a thing. I can't imagine the pain and suffering of having this happen to my loved ones. If the 23 year old is guilty of this crime, his punishment should be to be placed in solitary confinement for life with a photo of that little girl and her parents on his wall.
This is a parent’s nightmare. Losing a child to an accident or a disease would be bad enough, but this? I just can’t imagine. And I can’t stop thinking about it.
wow. Im glad you decided to share this story with us. The way you told it is phenomenal. Despite the horrible ending and it being based on true events I think you captured ...I dont even know what or how to put it into words. Your title hits it on the head. Selfishly, I wish you would write crime fiction or psychological thrillers just based off this entry.
It’s been a pretty shocking couple of weeks. Now that the police have made an arrest, things have settled down quite a bit. When the killer was still at large (it’s possible that he/she still is), there was a real sense of uneasiness all over the place.
I still can’t fathom it. And similarly, I can’t fathom how quickly time just marches on.
The really scary part is that there's always another killer at large. Maybe not so close to home, but while we're going about our normal day there are lives out there at a standstill because of the tragedy they are dealing with. And the fact that this child had such a short walk from home and was still able to be taken without anyone noticing is really scary. Because we do just go about our day and not always see beyond our horse blinders. In part - the media is to blame. It is said that at any given time there are 25 - 50 active serial killers in the United States. I haven't heard about one of them. Which then brings up the debate of how much information should the public get about these things? How do you decide what is a warning or a caution versus starting a panic attack within the community? Which is safer?
Really? 25 - 50 active serial killers at any given time? That’s hard to fathom, especially considering that you don’t really hear about them.
I think awareness is very important. It’s the first step in making a plan for possible prevention. In lieu of the most recent school shooting, though, I really wonder what can be done to prevent those from a community aspect. Kidnappings I think are easier to create deterrents for. Shootings are tough.
Regarding the story above, I’m really eager to know more details. The information that has been released seems a little unusual to me.
The suspected killer lived on her street, so he was obviously familiar with her routine. He abducted her within a 300 meter stretch. She said goodbye to her friends 300 meters from her house and never made it home. Was it a forceful abduction? Did he use a small lie to get her into his car or his house? I don’t know. But the abduction probably took place shortly after 3:00. Her body was at 10:30, roughly a 100 meters from her house and the abduction area, and the autopsy suggests that she had already been dead for 7 hours at that point. So what did the killer do? What was the point? It’s morose, but I really want to know and understand.
In response to this, there has been an increase in community volunteers standing at street corners, watching students get home, and the way in which students are sent home has changed too. Originally, they were encouraged to walk home in pairs or small groups, now they are sent home according to chosen routes in large groups with teachers accompanying them in some cases.
I'm with you - my curiosity is peaked. One of my favorite shows of all time is Forensic Files. Based off my knowledge learned from TV (LOL, thats a joke) I would hazard the following guesses:
The killer and the girl were familiar with each other. Enough so that she didn't have any gut feelings or red flags when he approached her on the train tracks. Without knowing the surrounding areas at all, I would still assume that at that time of day when school let out, there are people everywhere. Kids walking home in all directions, parents picking up their kids etc etc. So for her to be abducted less than half a mile from her house after JUST saying good bye to her friends tells me she didn't cause a scene or struggle with the killer. And fortunately, she died within 30 minutes of being taken. At the very very very least, she wasn't tortured for hours. The fact that her body was nicely laid out to be found also makes me think that the killer is familiar with the train schedule and waited to put her body out to be found at a specific time so that he would not be caught but that her body would be seen.
He's smart and this could mean pre-meditation. OR, it could mean he acted impulsively and felt remorse afterwards, thus letting her body be found.
Nobody will really ever understand the killer's motivation but himself.
It's really sad that we are having drills for school shootings now. When I was in elementary school, it was just simple fire drills. Unfortunately, the increase in volunteers will only work until the volunteers feel its safe again and slowly drop off. Yup, 25 - 50. There's always going to be another one.
So this is what apparently happened and, actually, I think this is worse and harder to understand than if it had been premeditated and the result of a mental oddity, etc. Let me know what you think.
The killer was driving on a narrow street, the same street that led to the girl’s house and that he lived on. He hit the girl with his car on accident. How badly she was hit, I don’t know. The girl was very worked up, screaming and crying, so he put her in his car. Then he panicked, presumably thinking about how he would probably lose his job and have to pay a big settlement, etc. So he strangled her in his car.
Unbelievable, right? To me, that’s even worse. If I were the parents, this would absolutely crush me. He could have helped, could have saved, but made this ridiculous decision instead and killed her.
Believe it or not, I'm somewhat relieved to hear this because I was haunted by thoughts of the seven hours between her disappearance and discovery. I imagined the most horrible things happening to the poor girl during that time.
One story that has always stuck with me is the woman who hit a man and he ended up stuck halfway through her windshield. She parked the car in her garage and would go out there periodically to check on him as he died over the next few days.
Oh my god! That’s horrible!!! Shock and panic are really strong and unpredictable emotions. As much as I like to say I would never do that if I were ever in a similar situation, the fact probably is that I don’t know. I really hope (and don’t think) that I would do anything like these people did.
I knew from the day they announced the story on the news that she had been killed pretty much immediately after she disappeared. That was a detail that really didn’t make any sense to me. It is nice to know that she wasn’t subjected to the horrors that women are often faced with in abduction situations, but still, this would really, really drive me crazy if I were one of her parents or her brother.
Awful incident it was...
Very shocking and very sad!
Ahh!just loved reading it.
Feeling so amazing right now.
Interesting. It’s really not a feel good piece.
I am so sorry my friend was using my account for one day,it was not my comment.
10:19分、29分のように1分単位で記録をされたのですね。最近窓から外の景色を見ていない気がするので、今日は見てみようと思います。何が見えるかな？
この記事の構造は少しわかりにくいかもしれません。この前全国ニュースで話された新潟の殺害事件について書いた記事です。亡くなった女の子は僕が働いている学校の生徒でした。書いてある時間はその犯罪の時間です。新聞にのっていました。そして窓の部分は僕が二週間の間感じたのことや印象です。
やすさんは窓からもっと嬉しいことが見えたと望んでいます。
何かうまくコメントできず、ごめんなさい。
大丈夫ですよ。いい話じゃなかったからうまくコメントが出来ないです。
この事件で五月は結構大変でした。この記事を投稿するのは僕のストレスや心配などをまとめて発散する方法でした。