I Am The Harbinger of Death

Well, this morning was a bloody one for me. Seems wherever I went, I was searching out death. I sat on our assignment desk for the first part of the morning since we didn't have anoyone to cover it. At 2:30am, our executive producer Dave, decided to send me out to Beachwood, a predominently Jewish community, to cruise the local temples for any vigils that may have sprung up pertaining to the health crisis with Israeli PM Ariel Sharon.

When I left, the desk was left un-monitored...more on that to follow. I drove out to Beachwood to find what I thought I'd find....nothing going on.

I called back and told the girl at the desk (finally someone came in) that I didn't find anything.

I came back in time to load up for our morning live shots. I was told to shoot traffic because the weather didn't look good enough for our helicopter to go up. So, I thought, easy day. Nope. I was totally wrong.

I was only 20 minutes into my live shots when I get called to a homicide. Seems that police responded to a call for shots fired. They show up, don't find anything right away. They snoop a little and find a body on a semi-enclosed porch. The body was there for about an hour before the police found it.

While I'm at the homicide, I get a call to head 20 miles east of Cleveland to Mentor, OH for a fire at an industrial park. Luckily, the desk person called one photog who lives a few miles from the fire to shoot it and that she was sending the chopper. Guess the weather was good enough to go up after all.

Then, while I'm still at the homicide, I get a call to head to Parma for a murder/suicide. The desk tells me it happened around 2:41 a.m. It's now 6:10 a.m. (Remember back when I was at the desk, filling in and got sent on a wild goose chase?) If I'd been at the desk I'd have probably have heard the call over the scanner. Well, I got there too late and the scene had been cleared.

So, in a morning that I thought would be a quiet and easy show, I had three dead in the matter of an hour and a half. To make matters worse, I ran over a dead cat with my live truck on the way back to the station. Couldn't avoid it.

So, I'm just going to relax and forget that today ever happened. I'll just etch it into teh internets for posterity.