When I read the police reports for our neighborhoods on New Year’s day, as I do most days, I noted that earlier that morning a man who owned a house in the 1000 block of Barrone Circle (that’s just off Northwest Highway between Plano and Ferndale, across the street from Tony’s) admitted to accidentally shooting another man in the face following a night of drinking with friends.
I could hardly bear to think extensively about the situation, because it seemed so senseless. Every New Year’s Eve, because of excessive alcohol consumption, I worry about what terrible things, like car accidents, will happen. It also reminded me of a time, when I was in high school at Bryan Adams, that one of my classmates accidentally shot and killed another of my classmates in a house directly across the street from my own Lochwood home. They were kids and you might have blamed the shooter’s parents, as many did. But it turns out that the killer and victim in this New Year’s Day incident were 28 and 29, respectively — the victim a grad student at Texas Tech University.
As reported on a Lubbock news site, “Joshua Joe Brown, a Tech student from Abilene, was drinking with five other people at about 3:40 a.m. at a house in Northeast Dallas when a friend picked up a handgun and accidentally shot Brown in the head.”
Police did not arrest the suspect and say they will leave the decision over whether or not to press charges up to a grand jury.