Pack Rat

I know people who keep all kinds of weird things for no reason. My brother amassed an impressive collection of Big Gulp cups once that he kept in stacked towers in his bedroom. In my teens I had a few hundred 'New Times' newspapers tucked away in my closet. My brother and I were no match for this guy, however.

His small hatchback was so full of newspapers, coffee cups, plastic cup lids and straws there were barely room for him in the driver seat. The stick shift was hidden inside a small cove of stacked paper and the entire view through the windshield was blocked except for a small area above the steering wheel. If the passenger door was ever opened an avalanche of paper goods would pour out onto the ground.

He was stopped for the obvious hazard his internal load posed. If his little car was packed this full of items I wondered what the inside of his house looked like. I asked him if he collected things for his home too, and he told me his house was much fuller.

ANOTHER TYPICAL SHOOTING

"911 -what is your emergency?"

"I've been shot!!"

"What happened?"

"I don't know -I just got out of my car and someone shot me!!"

Several officers raced to the scene and found a man lying on the ground next to the driver's side door of his car. Blood poured from his right leg as he rolled around in pain. We quickly set up a perimeter and called for the helicopter. The victim told us he was alone in his car when he parked and got out. Then, he heard a gunshot and was hit in the leg.

His car was under a covered parking spot with vehicles parked on both sides of him. A wall of apartments surrounded the front and both sides of the parking lot. He did not see a shooter, nor did any of the several people who were outsided and heard the gunshot. We looked in his car and saw a single shell casing on the floor in front of the front passenger seat. Since all the windows were up the only way the bullet casing could get there would be if the gun was fired from inside the car. The victim insisted there was nobody with him in the car. There was blood on the driver's seat and inside the driver's door. It didn't take a detective to figure out he was shot from inside the car while he was sitting in the driver's seat. We then found a gun under the passenger seat.

Later, at the hospital, he admitted the obvious: He reached for the unholstered gun under the passenger seat and accidentally pulled the trigger when he grasped the handle. He was a prior convicted felon and was prohibited from having a firearm.