Sunday, June 28, 2009

40

Shots echoed through the city streets at a quarter after three in the morning. Being so close to the Fourth of July, the majority of residents, if they heard the shots at all, attributed them to juvenile delinquents with firecrackers. Usually, the call center would be inundated with 911 calls, but there was only one.

Julie Robertoson was up at a quarter after three because her new baby son, just a week old, wasn't sleeping regularly. She didn't have any experience with babies and there was no one in her life to give her advice. Julie was walking him back and forth, back and forth in her studio apartment on the first floor of a building where social services said she could live with reduced rent. It was a bad neighborhood, and Julie knew it, but she only had a distant concept of what a "good" neighborhood would be like. Julie was the only one to call 911 that night.

The fifteenth time Julie passed by the window, infant son wailing in her arms, his head exploded.

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