Tragic Consequences

The death of teenager Aminulrasyid Amzah was tragic. My heartfelt condolences to his family.

Reading the Sun’s report of the incident indicated so many wrongs, accumulating to the deadly one that ended the life of the 15 year old.

Was it a heat of the moment incident? Will we ever know?

You tend to get mixed feelings when reading news of the police shooting “alleged criminals”.

On one hand you think “Good riddance”, but on the other, you are disturbed by the seemingly “shoot-first-ask-questions-later” gungho-ness in these incidents.

Most of the times, these deaths become mere statistics, and their stories left untold except for the few paras in the mainstream newspapers.

Many more find their way into the courts, but to date, nothing concrete has taken place. I stand to be corrected in this.

We read that the crime rate has fallen of late, and yet, at the same breath – often just pages away – we read of victims shot gangland or assassin style, maimed and injured while their belongings snatched away, robbed in the wee hours of the morning or late at night.

Both sides of the coin seemed to be going towards extreme ends.

My neighbourhood is not a gated community per se. We have a secured single entry point, but as often is the case, the barrier only filters those who drive into the area. Motorcycles and pedestrians come and go as they like as there are far too many entry points to guard.

Still, the residence is relatively safe to the point of you being able to see a woman – a neighbour two doors across – jog the stretch of the homes in late evenings.

Even then, sometimes you catch unknown faces on motorcycles looking at one house to the other. Suspicious, isn’t it?

You then make judgement call in whether these are bad hats, whether a report should be lodge with the police, whether you should alert others to the same.

Once upon a time when life was far simpler, whole residences know each other well enough and knows exactly who they need to be wary about, but usually this wariness is more the form of missing coconuts, cooking utensils and so on.

These days, you just can’t help but be paranoid. There are just too many scums amongst the local population to not be so.

Talking about that, I felt the same measure of disgust when reading this Malaysian Insider’s report on the tragedy.

Politicians. Some of them just can’t seem to get away from being self serving.

Disgusting.

Anchor by Amy Sol.