Freak Deaths

People die from all kinds of causes every day. For me, I am always hit particularly hard by the sudden and senseless deaths. The freak accidents. They perfectly represent the chaos of life that we cannot help but feel a sense of helplessness at.

Stray Bullet

Just a couple of days ago, a 21-year-old university student was killed by a stray bullet right next to where I work. I am inexplicably saddened reading about this incident. I guess it’s because it is so close to home, and it really could have been me?

Apparently, the shooter was a guy who had just bought an air gun off the Internet. In all of his unfathomable stupidity, he decided to bring it to a coffee shop to show off to his friends. Then I guess when he was toying with the gun, he accidentally squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit the victim who was sitting outside a house waiting for his girlfriend. He was just sitting there, texting his mother, thinking about plans for the weekend, then suddenly it was lights out.

The whole incident was caught on security camera, and I cannot get it out of my head. It is heart-breakingly haunting. A young man just minding his own business, casually doing something that I could have been doing, and suddenly he grasped his chest, breathed his last breaths, and was gone.

There are a lot of these negligent discharges incidents — people handling guns unsafely and accidentally squeezing the trigger. But what makes this video particularly haunting for me is that the victim and the shooter did not know each other at all. And even worse, he wasn’t close to the shooter (they were 30-40 metres apart) and did not even see it coming. There was nothing he could have done to prevent his death. Whether there exists an afterlife or not, I sincerely wish he rest in peace.

Random and Freak Deaths

There are countless similar instances of these freak accidents. I remember in 2015 a couple of people died from steel beams falling down from the overhead railway construction site in Hanoi. It could very well have been me riding past this street. I was, in fact, regularly commuting through this very street on a regular basis.

Imagine just riding on the street and those massive steel rods crash down on your neck.

Another incident that hits me hard is this woman dying from falling down a canal. It was raining, the road was flooded, and she couldn’t see the little canal. It was only 50cm wide. She stepped on it, fell down, and died a horrible death.

I remember in 2008 Hanoi had a historic flood where the entire city was covered in thigh-deep water. I was in 10th grade, getting home in a bus from school. I got out of the bus and ran straight home to avoid the torrential rain. Suddenly, a woman pointed at me and yelled STOP!. I immediately froze. I was centimetres away from falling down the canal in front of my house. The flooded street made it impossible to see where the water began.

I used to walk by that massive canal every day (and almost died in it). Luckily it is safely covered now.

So yeah, I could have been a news story: 10th Grader Dies Falling Down a Canal in Hanoi’s Historic Flood. It’s a shame that I didn’t say thank you loud enough to that woman as it was raining heavily. But she absolutely saved my life — no doubt about it.

The Frustration and Helplessness

I guess the reason why these deaths hit me so hard is that:

  1. They happen right in my local vicinity. Except for the woman who drowned in HCMC, the rest of these deaths happened on streets that I was travelling on regularly.
  2. It could have been me. This is an especially chilling factor. None of the victims was doing anything stupid. They were walking, driving, sitting using their phone. Things that everybody does. I can totally see myself sitting in that very same spot that the gunshot victim was killed in.
  3. They were helpless. Nothing could have been done to prevent these deaths. You could have been the most cautious person, wearing a helmet, driving defensively on the road, staying away from bad areas, and you would still be in the wrong place at the wrong time and die.
  4. They show that life is inherently chaotic and unfair. I guess we all long for a sense of order and fairness in life. We want the universe to make sense, to have a degree of predictability and stability in it. But then these things happen — to perfectly moral and innocent people, and we cannot help but feel a tremendous sense of helplessness and frustration at it all. It is just… the way it is.
  5. A lot of the victims are young. The stray bullet victim was only 21 years old and about to graduate university. He had his whole life ahead of him. I guess when victims are children or young people, we feel like there is something wasted here. So much potential, so much life gone too soon. Not to say an old person’s death is not tragic, but we certainly place far more value on youth.

At the end of the day, it’s just important to keep in mind that shit happens. People are born and people die every day. It’s just life. It is not inherently fair and it does not have to make sense to us.

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