I don’t think about it often but sometimes it’s coming back to me. That typical summer day which ended up not being typical at all.

In my old home town me and my family lived in a nice neighbourhood. Your typical middle class neighbourhood where the neighbours talked over fences and the kids played in the street. A safe neighbourhood. Bad things just didn’t happen there. Or so we thought.

I had a friend from out of town visiting and we had woken up not too long ago. We were talking and the window was open since it was a hot day. All of a sudden we hear a loud bang. We look at eachother going “What was that?”. I thought that it sounded a lot like a gunshot but then I thought, nahh, that can’t be it. I still got this uneasy feeling and got up to find out whatever that sound was. One part of my mind was shouting “gunshot, gunshot, gunshot, I need to check on my family!” but I remained calm and went to the kitchen where my dad was standing, looking out the window.

I asked him about the sound and he replied “Our neighbour just shot a guy. He’s lying there in the street”. I looked out the window and like 20 meters away a man laid on his back in a white bloody t-shirt, not moving.

My dad (and several other neighbours) called the cops. Our neighbour stood on his lawn, calmly waiting for them when they arrived and arrested him. Several cops stood at the lawn after the arrest but didn’t do anything in particular. Then all of a sudden they run to to the backyard. We later found out that the man had not only killed the man in the street but also his wife a couple of hours earlier. She was lying in a shed in the backyard. The media said it was all about jelousy. A jelous abusing husband.

There was a neighbourhood meeting where the police informed us about what had happened and they talked to my parents and the rest of the neighbours who had witnessed the murder. A part of the street was shut down and they put up a tent around the body. The whole thing was surreal.

The weirdest part was that the man seemed like such a nice guy and their family appeared to be so normal. They always greeted me and god knows not many of the neighbours did that. The wife even paid my bus ticket once when I didn’t have enough money on me and dad sold them his old car.

The worst thing was that our neighbours had three kids. Three kids who in one day lost both their parents. Later that night me and my friend went to rent some movies. There we met the kids and a man who must have been a social worker. I didn’t know what to say and how to act. I said hello to the oldest girl and she greeted me aswell, like we always did. I wanted to hug her and tell her I was so sorry but I didn’t. Maybe I should have. I don’t know.

On the International Women’s day the following year the political youth party I was involved with held a manifestation where we lit a candle for every woman murdered by a boyfriend or husband in the past year. I thought about my neighbour when I lit those candles. I don’t even remember her name or the name of her children but I think about them from time to time.