The World Outside My Office Window

Yesterday was the strangest day at work. Sometime shortly after my workday began at 8:30, a female pedestrian at the bus depot across the street was struck by a city bus, dragged a bit, then trapped beneath the vehicle for some time before finally dying at the scene. A brief account of the accident appears here:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/news/062404_nw_bus_ax.html

None of us here at work saw the accident happen, but we had a clear view of the woman's body, covered in a yellow tarp and resting on the ground directly behind the bus, for most of the day. The harrowing scene included the woman's belongings, strewn on the pavement just behind where she lay. It looked like a black totebag and maybe a purse, each with its contents spilled out. It was as if time froze the moment the accident happened, with the bus, the woman, and her personal items all remaining in place for several hours after the accident occurred, while the police and various other adults milled about and, presumably, investigated the crime scene.

What made this incident not only tragic and terrifying but also surreal was my proximity to the office window that perfectly frames the bus depot. It's impossible for me to look toward the window without seeing the sprawling grounds of the bus terminal; I even see the window when I'm not facing it, as it is reflected in my computer monitor. So, all day yesterday, when I wasn't purposely staring out the window at the crime scene with the rest of my officemates, I kept catching inadvertent glances of the dead woman's body. Any time I turned away from my computer or got up from my chair to visit the kitchen, the restroom, or the printer, I saw her; or rather, the form of her body beneath the yellow tarp.

I found the experience very unsettling and distressing, and I kept wondering about the woman, her family, and the destination she never reached that morning. I also thought about how no one should have to die in such an undignified, horrific manner; that is, being hit by a bus. To be running for the bus one minute and dead the next? It seems absurd and unfair.

On another, less-emotional level, the whole experience was educational. I'd never seen a real-life fatal-crime scene before yesterday, and it was interesting for my coworkers and I to witness the course of events unfold throughout the day. First, the police taped off the crime scene with that yellow "Caution" tape. Then there were many men milling about, and crouching down by the body, and standing up again, and what appeared to be their taking of photographs. We also noticed a large group of plain-clothed people queued up on the sidewalk by the depot for at least a couple of hours, and we wondered if they were witnesses to the accident. Perhaps they'd been on the bus that struck the woman, or maybe they'd been waiting at the depot for that bus, or another, to arrive.

We saw no ambulance, just nine police cars and a few official-looking city vehicles. No crowd was gathered, perhaps because the area is right outside the airport and a bit isolated from the surrounding communities. I think if a similar accident occurred in the heart of, say, Hollywood or Santa Monica or some other heavily residential part of the city, swarms of onlookers would be present, and the whole scene would be rather chaotic.

Finally, in the afternoon, the coroner arrived. He or she set up some sort of tent over the woman's body, which remained for an hour or so. Later, the body was removed. That was a relief. I think if the victim were a loved one of mine, I would want her body removed from the scene as quickly as possible.

Afterward, maybe around 3:00 or so, a white van with the business name "Clean Scene" arrived at the depot. Dressed in white biohazard suits, the Clean Scene staff got to work scrubbing the place on the pavement where the body had been. That was creepy, but interesting. None of us realized that accident clean-up is, at least in some cases, performed by a private business instead of by the city.

By about 4:30, the depot was back to its original state: The bus that had struck the woman was gone, the woman's body and personal items had been removed, the pavement was clean, and the yellow crime-scene tape was gone. All in a day's work for the LAPD, I guess.

A few of us in the office kept gazing out the window at the bus depot after all traces of the accident were gone. I kept thinking about the people driving and walking by who had no idea what had occurred there earlier in the day.