News of the Weird...Lawrence Style

Even those of you who don't live here probably know that Lawrence is generally a pretty quiet town when it comes serious crime. That's why it was a pretty big deal on Monday when I drove past the Yellow Sub on campus and saw tons of camera crews and satellite trucks from all the KC television stations. Apparently, a body had been found in the recently closed building early that morning. There had been a "closing party" at the restaurant the night before, at which time some vandalism had occurred to the soon to be demolished building. The body was discovered the next morning and the police and news reporters were all over the scene, but the cause of death hadn't been reported. Since Lawrence only has about 2 murders a year (compare that to Topeka's 10 or so), just the possibility that there was foul play involved was a huge deal.

Anyway, yesterday the police finally released the cause of death, which was reported in this morning's paper. The man had apparently been at the closing party earlier in the night and then left, returning to the premises sometime after 2:30 a.m. and crawling back into the building through the broken front window. He gashed his femoral artery on the shattered class and bled to death before anyone found him. How horrible is that? It's so tragic, especially because he was within 200 yards of several residences where he could have gone for help. He was apparently impaired enough by the alcohol, pot and cocaine in his system that he either didn't realize he needed immediate medical attention or wasn't able to get to it quickly enough. So very sad and so very bizarre. That's about as weird as news gets here in Lawrence!