Miguel Mora’s strange day began late on the Fourth of July as he rode his motorcycle following his shift at a local McDonald’s where he was a manager trainee. Driving on the freeway he watched the fireworks in the distance being held at various sites around the city. He didn’t know why, but Miguel always found silent fireworks off in the distance sad. Something about them filled him with loneliness.
When he got off the exit he rode over to his house as usual. But this night was different. There was a crowd of people in his front yard. At first he thought it was just his mother and younger siblings having a little Fourth of July party. But that wasn’t it. No one was smiling and having fun. Several of them, including his mother, grandmother and two younger brothers were holding each other – and crying.
Miguel dropped his helmet and ran over to them. His mother and grandmother broke loose from the others and hugged him tightly. He could feel their warm tears on his skin.
In Spanish he asked them, “Que pasa? Que sucedio?”
At first no one answered, as if the answer would make it real. That’s when Miguel made eye contact with his 11-year-old brother who also had tears streaming down his face.
“Angela,” his brother said.
“What about Angela?”
“She was shot.”
“Que? Where is she? Was she taken to the hospital?”
The brother couldn’t bring himself to say it.
Miguel’s grandmother was the one who broke the news. She took a step back from Miguel, holding onto one of his hands.
“Cariñó, este es muy triste,” she said. “But our Angela has been taken from us.”
Miguel’s Downward Spiral
For weeks later, Miguel replayed that Fourth of July night, first the silent, far away fireworks from the freeway then driving up the dark street to the yard full of sad people.
The part he didn’t see, he could only imagine. And it unfolded the same way – like a repetitive bad dream – every time he thought about it.
What he kept seeing in his mind’s eye was his 7-year-old sister Angela lying face down on the front yard, blood pumping from a bullet hole in the side of her head – a sparkler still burning at her side. This is what cousins and neighbor children told the detective who investigated. They told him she just collapsed suddenly. Nobody heard a gunshot, nobody saw strangers standing around.
Miguel also learned from follow-up conversations his mother had with the detective that the police originally suspected a drive-by shooting, especially since their neighborhood near the freeway had a long history of illicit drug activities. But witness accounts couldn’t correlate it. Finally, based on the angle of the entrance trajectory and the fact no one heard the shot, police believed Angela was hit by a stray bullet fired from a higher location, possibly a roof top or second story deck. Since it happened on the Fourth of July, police felt someone may have been firing a small caliber hand gun during a holiday party.
Miguel couldn’t get his mind around it then; months later he still couldn’t. His sweet little sister was killed by a stray bullet. Classic wrong place wrong time. If only Angela had run the opposite direction with her sparkler, or her sparkler had burned out a moment sooner, she would still be alive.
Police were investigating.
The death of Miguel’s young sister devastated the family.
Miguel’s mother – a single mom with three other children including Miguel – had to take a personal leave from her job as an office assistant. This made Miguel the sole bread winner with his job at McDonald’s – and that wasn’t going well. After Angela’s death, Miguel began to drink. It was beer at first, then harder liquor. He even began drinking on his lunch hour, walking a couple blocks from McDonald’s to buy liquor at a 7-Eleven. One rainy night after work Miguel was returning home on his motorcycle and ran through a stop sign causing a serious accident and breaking his left arm.
His motorcycle was totaled and Miguel had his license suspended.
Death by Stray Bullet
Several months dragged by and police had no new leads. The detective on the case had cajoled the local newspaper’s cop reporter to write a piece on Angela Mora’s tragic Fourth of July death. Local news stations also ran public service announcements on the case asking for the public’s support by calling an anonymous hotline number with any information that could lead to an arrest of the shooter.
It did not look promising. The phones were silent and Miguel suspected the police had pretty much given up hope of ever finding out who fired the gun that killed his little sister.
Then one evening in mid-October, the detective knocked on the door wanting to speak to Miguel’s mother. He said he had a bit of good news. An anonymous call from the hotline led to the arrest of the person police believed was responsible for the death of Angela.
Miguel recalled sitting at their kitchen table with his mother and the detective. With tears rolling down his mother’s cheeks, the detective told her that according to a female passenger she and several friends were drinking beer and driving fast on the freeway. They were all partying and watching the fireworks in the distance when of the passengers, a 17-year-old boy named Roger Lake, suddenly pulled out a gun and began waving it around saying “here’s some more fireworks.” He then stuck the gun out the window and fired several rounds despite protests from the driver and other passengers in the vehicle.
The detective said the girl who called the hotline said she probably never would have called had she not seen a story on the news about the little girl killed by a stray bullet. She said she couldn’t live with herself any longer without saying something.
A Disturbing Aquital
Police had little trouble finding Roger Lake, a high school dropout who lived on the other side of town in a picture perfect neighborhood. Incredibly, police obtained a warrant to search Lake’s house and found the gun, a small caliber 0.25 Baby Browning that Lake said he found but never fired. Ballistics proved otherwise, matching the gun with the slug that took the life of Miguel’s sister Angela.
A very tall and skinny and scared Roger Lake was taken into custody and held in a juvenile detention center. But he wasn’t there for long. He was released to his parents after assurance that he would appear in juvenile court.
A month later, a juvenile court judge found Lake guilty of a low level felony. But because Lake was a juvenile offender with a clean record, the judge only sentenced him to community service as well as sensitivity courses.
Angela Mora’s family was outraged.
Miguel was especially disturbed that his little sister’s murderer escaped punishment. So, following a beer drinking binge, Miguel decided to take the punishment factor into his own hands.
Miguel purchased a cheap Saturday Night Special from a high school friend in the neighborhood who was known to have a lucrative gun trafficking business conducted through select tax drivers. Stepping out of a taxi with the piece hidden in his pants, Miguel walked to the house of another friend from high school and borrowed his car.
The next day, Miguel waited in the borrowed car down the street from the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Chas. M. Lake. Miguel had seen a photo online of the ugly skinny-ass kid who killed his sister. He also found all the other information he needed online including the address of the family’s two story home located near the end of a cul-de-sac in a neatly manicured neighborhood. Miguel parked his friend’s car far enough way so no one would suspect he was waiting for anyone, but close enough to see Roger Lake when he stepped out of his lovely house.
Turned out, Miguel didn’t have to wait long. Just after noon, Roger Lake stepped out of his front door. He was holding a leash and a white poodle-like dog attached to it. Miguel assumed people in this neighborhood walked their dogs on leashes then scooped up their poop with plastic bags. This was very different from his barrio where dogs stayed outside and shit wherever they wanted. There were no poodles.
Miguel quietly opened the car door and stepped out on the street never taking his eyes off Roger Lake the dog walker. This teenage gringo was even thinner and uglier than he imagined. He was SO white. Feo. Like a vampire sucked all his blood out. Soon, Miguel thought, it wouldn’t make any difference.
With his right hand in his pants gripping the revolver, Miguel walked toward his sister’s killer. About 20 feet away he stopped. Roger Lake also stopped, biting his lower lip.
“What do you want?” he said, swallowing hard.
“Are you Roger Lake?”
“Why?”
Miguel removed his revolver. Roger Lake’s freckled face contorted looking like he was trying not to pee.
“I have a message from my Angela,” Miguel said.
Roger Lake dropped the leash, stumbled, then ran back toward his house.
Miguel fired twice. And Miguel, who had never fired a gun before, missed both times. The Lake’s front door opened with Roger and then his poodle rushing inside. Other doors in the neighborhood also opened.
Miguel ran back to the car and left. Before he returned home he had wiped his prints from the revolver and tossed it in a canal as his friend recommended. Slamming his head against the side of the car, he wondered how the hell he missed that fool. For a brief moment after the confrontation, Miguel had considered taking one of the bullets himself and joining Angela.
But he did something else instead.
Miguel’s Turnaround
There was an investigation. Miguel, Miguel’s known friends and older cousins were the prime suspects. But when Roger Lake was shown photos of the suspects – including Miguel’s photo – he told investigators that he didn’t recognize anyone.
The case disappeared. Miguel on the other hand had a dream. In the dream his sister appeared and assured him she was fine. She also told him to make something of himself. She told him to do it for the family. To do it for her.
Six months later Miguel earned his GED diploma. Six months after that he joined the U.S. Army.
Years Later
Exactly six years to the date Angela Mora lost her life to the careless act of a teenage boy, her older brother Miguel, now an Army veteran, was preparing for a fun Fourth of July outing with his fiancée. The plan was to spend a leisurely day at a local park enjoying a holiday picnic with Miguel’s family and his fiancée’s family and friends. Then later they would drive to a nearby baseball park to watch the fireworks – up close and personal.
But first, Miguel wanted to take his fiancée to an outdoor shooting range where he would practice firing a couple clips from his Ruger 9mm semi-automatic pistol and introduce his fiancée to the art of using a firearm correctly.
In the Army Miguel excelled. He soon realized he had a talent for firearms. His superiors recognized this also and Miguel received extensive training as an infantry sniper. After his four-year enlistment was up, Miguel seriously considered re-enlisting, but he wanted to do more to help his mother and siblings so he became a civilian again and soon found a good paying job as a manager for a national food supply distributor. But Miguel continued his inactive Army obligations. This meant continuing to hone his sharpshooting skills.
The outdoor shooting range was located on the edge of town near a popular golf driving range. Miguel and his fiancée arrived around 10 a.m. Miguel purchased two targets and was assigned a shooting station. Then with their protective earmuffs in place, Miguel fired his first clip. He then turned his attention to his fiancée, working with her on how to properly load, grip, aim and fire a pistol.
On the handoff back to Miguel, the Ruger accidentally fired one more round. Miguel wasn’t sure if it was his fiancée’s finger or his own on the trigger. But this was not good – a violation of every shooting range in the world. Amazingly, no one seemed to notice. Miguel wasn’t sure where the round went. On the drive back to his apartment to prepare for the picnic, Miguel realized the cause of the misfire was a mistake on his part, miscounting the rounds in the clip, forgetting about the one round already in the chamber.
Roger Lake — Again
The next morning, a Sunday, Miguel didn’t have to work. So he and his fiancée were enjoying a leisurely breakfast in Miguel’s apartment. Miguel was reading the Sunday newspaper – in an era when people still did that. The front page displayed a large color photo of fireworks. In fact, much of the front page was dedicated to a recap of the town’s Fourth of July celebration.
It took some searching, but Miguel also found some real news on the front page. In a small box frame in the bottom right hand section there was a story with the headline Golf Employee Felled by Stray Bullet.
It had been a long time since Miguel thought about stray bullets. But as he read the story a familiar malaise returned. According to the article, an employee driving the ball picker cart at a local golf range was struck in the neck by an apparent stray bullet and killed. Police theorized that the bullet came from a nearby shooting range – one that had been at the center of a controversy since opening two years earlier. Owners of the driving range as well as neighbors had complained to the city council about the proximity of the shooting range. But the council felt otherwise.
In a microsecond, Miguel relived the accidental discharge the day before.
The story jumped to a spot deep inside the paper. There he found a photo of the victim. He was older now, a heavier face outlined in a wispy beard. But no mistaking, this was him.
The cutline under the victim’s photo identified him as 23-year-old Roger M. Lake. He had been a part-time employee of the driving range for about a month. He had not been scheduled to work on the Fourth of July, but was replacing a full time employee who was taking the day off.
Police, the story concluded, were investigating …
Impossible Odds
The National Center for Health Statistics reports that the odds of being struck by a stray bullet in a person’s lifetime are one in 6,000. The odds of being killed by a stray bullet are one in 60,000.
The odds of killing someone by firing a stray bullet and then being killed yourself by a stray bullet are not available.
The general consensus is that a bullet fired straight up – at precisely 90 degrees to the horizontal – is unlikely to kill a healthy adult when it returns to Earth. That’s because, on the way down, air resistance prevents the bullet from returning to its initial velocity. The bullet would deliver a painful wallop but could only have a chance of killing you with a direct hit to the eye, ear or mouth.
That said, bullets fired at an upward angle of 45 degrees or less can be far more lethal, since they’re likely to hit someone on the ground while traveling at a much greater speed. In this case, gravity isn’t directly opposing the bullet’s motion, so the projectile stays at a higher velocity throughout its flight path. It’s also more likely to maintain its initial, aerodynamically favorable orientation. Bullets fired vertically tend to fall nose-up or sideways, which creates a lot of drag.
A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 80% of celebratory gunfire-related injuries are to the head, feet, and shoulders. Celebratory gunfire is the shooting of a firearm into the air in celebration. It is culturally accepted in parts of the Balkans, parts of Russia, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Puerto Rico, seven people have died from celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Eve in the last 20 years. Between the years 1985 and 1992, doctors at the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, treated some 118 people for random falling-bullet injuries. Thirty-eight of them died.
In the United States, firing a gun into the air for no particular reason can be a misdemeanor or felony, depending on the state. In California, discharging a firearm into the air is a felony punishable by three years in state prison. If the stray bullet kills someone, the shooter can be charged with murder. In Ohio, discharging a firearm or a deadly weapon in a public place is classified as disorderly conduct, a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a fine of up to $2,000.
Arizona changed its penalty in 2000 from a misdemeanor to a felony after 14-year-old Shannon Smith died after being struck in the head by a bullet fired more than a mile away. She was talking on the telephone in the backyard of her Central Phoenix home. This upgrade in punishment became known as Shannon’s Law.
Then There’s the Karma Factor
The odds of an irresponsible person killing another by firing a gun in the air and then being killed similarly – and by a relative of the first person killed – defy mathematical calculations. The chance of this happening are so remarkable that it’s tempting to turn to the possibility of other forces involved.
While the science behind stray bullets can be calculated and the punishments recited, the karma factor is harder to measure.
Karma is a belief that whatever you do will come back to you, either in this life or the next. It is embraced by followers of Buddhism, Hinduism, and others around the world. Those who believe in Karma say Karma is formed when you significantly violate another’s domain (as in killing someone), creating an energy imbalance that then seeks resolution.
If this is true, Roger Lake’s mistake of firing a hand gun out the window of a moving vehicle filled this karma order to perfection. At the very least it was a slap in the face to the universal consciousness, which proceeded to balance the matter with an amazing synchronicity – one that has about as much chance of being comprehended by humans as a harvester ant understanding basic math.
A predatorial universe, it would appear, takes no prisoners …