Birthday Dinner Violence
It's 10pm and I just returned from a birthday dinner with four of my girlfriends from work and it's just never a dull moment in my life - even when I'm five months pregnant and obviously behaving myself in the party sense of the word.
I haven't gone out since November and am usually asleep by 9pm, but tonight was a special occasion, as I turned 34 today. I headed out at 6:30pm to grab some dinner with Jaime and Jen, meeting up with Michelle and Amanda in Cuatro Grados, a very cool bar/restaurant area in Guatemala City where you'll find several very nice eateries, cafes and bars.
Unfortunately, I missed the turn I needed and found it almost impossible to get back to where I had come from. There are few stop lights in Guatemala and absolutely no left arrows, so if you miss a turn and have to turn around, you have to go right and find the proper one way that will get you across the street, but there's often a median, so you can't cross...in other words, you're screwed.
After driving all over town for an hour and a half - yes, you read correctly - we FINALLY made it to the Italian restaurant we were looking for. I had originally planned to be leaving the restaurant by that time to head home and fall asleep, but we were hungry and the night must go on.
We ordered our food and had a great dinner in the open air restaurant. It was a beautiful night and there was a Cuban band to entertain us that went on break just as we were finishing our dinner. We paid the check and were just finishing our beverages when four gun shots rang out no more than 10 yards from our table and directly in front of the parking garage my car was in.
We were stunned, at first, and just looked at each other in a "did I hear what I thought I heard" sort of way. The table next to us got up immediately and looked through the decorative iron bars onto the street where the shots came from. I commented that I wouldn't get that close to the action so soon. We were close enough being that we were in an outdoor restaurant right on the street!
A man that we are assuming was the shooter ran by and moments later, Amanda and I got up to see what had transpired.
The victim was laying face down, not moving a muscle, and a group of people quickly surrounded him. A woman, who appeared to know the victim, was hysterically screaming and fell to her knees. Another guy reached into the back of the victim's pants and took out what appeared to be a black hand gun, placing it in the back of his pants and getting on his cell phone to call someone.
I was just glad the victim didn't have a chance to reach back and grab his own gun, returning fire, because our table was directly across the street and could have been in the line of return fire. There are WAY too many guns in this country, as I've mentioned in a previous post.
It was an incredibly sad and surreal scene. To think that somebody could take a person's life like that was depressing. I've seen people die before - in traffic accidents or in the hospital, but I've never seen a life taken intentionally. It just didn't seem real.
We were glad that we hadn't left minutes earlier after paying our bill and getting our doggy bags. It was already too close for comfort, but it could have been closer. Yet another reminder how precious life is.
I haven't gone out since November and am usually asleep by 9pm, but tonight was a special occasion, as I turned 34 today. I headed out at 6:30pm to grab some dinner with Jaime and Jen, meeting up with Michelle and Amanda in Cuatro Grados, a very cool bar/restaurant area in Guatemala City where you'll find several very nice eateries, cafes and bars.
Unfortunately, I missed the turn I needed and found it almost impossible to get back to where I had come from. There are few stop lights in Guatemala and absolutely no left arrows, so if you miss a turn and have to turn around, you have to go right and find the proper one way that will get you across the street, but there's often a median, so you can't cross...in other words, you're screwed.
After driving all over town for an hour and a half - yes, you read correctly - we FINALLY made it to the Italian restaurant we were looking for. I had originally planned to be leaving the restaurant by that time to head home and fall asleep, but we were hungry and the night must go on.
We ordered our food and had a great dinner in the open air restaurant. It was a beautiful night and there was a Cuban band to entertain us that went on break just as we were finishing our dinner. We paid the check and were just finishing our beverages when four gun shots rang out no more than 10 yards from our table and directly in front of the parking garage my car was in.
We were stunned, at first, and just looked at each other in a "did I hear what I thought I heard" sort of way. The table next to us got up immediately and looked through the decorative iron bars onto the street where the shots came from. I commented that I wouldn't get that close to the action so soon. We were close enough being that we were in an outdoor restaurant right on the street!
A man that we are assuming was the shooter ran by and moments later, Amanda and I got up to see what had transpired.
The victim was laying face down, not moving a muscle, and a group of people quickly surrounded him. A woman, who appeared to know the victim, was hysterically screaming and fell to her knees. Another guy reached into the back of the victim's pants and took out what appeared to be a black hand gun, placing it in the back of his pants and getting on his cell phone to call someone.
I was just glad the victim didn't have a chance to reach back and grab his own gun, returning fire, because our table was directly across the street and could have been in the line of return fire. There are WAY too many guns in this country, as I've mentioned in a previous post.
It was an incredibly sad and surreal scene. To think that somebody could take a person's life like that was depressing. I've seen people die before - in traffic accidents or in the hospital, but I've never seen a life taken intentionally. It just didn't seem real.
We were glad that we hadn't left minutes earlier after paying our bill and getting our doggy bags. It was already too close for comfort, but it could have been closer. Yet another reminder how precious life is.