It stops feeling real after a while, covering crime scenes that is.  After a while, you have to remind yourself that people were involved in the events being covered.

It was really dark in Laguna Nigel last night.

Three people injured and one person dead.

I was on my way back to the station from San Bernardino when I got the call to head down to Orange County to help out another crew.

I didn’t know what the story was. I knew it had something to do with an OIS (officer involved shooting).

It was already after 9:00pm and I was winding down a day that had already seen me drive in traffic from Mission Hills to Colton, with a stop in Montclair on the way.

Yes.  Yes, there was traffic.

Not the last news van to pull up, but I was late getting there. Other crews were in position and about to go live.

We were okay.  The crew I was supposed to be “backing up” had gotten to the scene earlier and was actually somewhere that was now within the perimeter of the crime scene.

I couldn’t get to them.

Since I couldn’t help directly, I stayed near the other crews and waited for updates from the PIO.

There are some parts of Los Angeles where seeing a scene like this is sadly not that uncommon.

I’ve known for a long time that the world is not a safe place.  I used to try to warn people about that. 

Now I feel like the illusion or concept of civilization is probably helping to keep this type of thing from happening more often.

All the stations on the scene were given an update a few minutes before 11:00pm and I relayed the info to the reporter.

I’m glad I was able to do that.  Otherwise it would have felt like I’d made the long drive for nothing.

The b&w treatment on the photos was only because I wasn’t happy with the color in the pictures I snapped.  The lack of available light made it challenging to grab any shots.

you know, I think I mentioned that it was dark.

Yeah, in more ways than one.