Jordan was shot

Now is when Christians would say “The lord works in mysterious ways” to find comfort in this random, fragile, cruel world.

Wednesday morning at 1.40 am Jordan McKay was shot while riding his bicycle home through his quiet neighborhood, Richmond. He stumpled, bleeding, from door to door on Cabrillo Street but no one let him in. Someone called the police though, and when SFPD arrived the officers found Jordan collapsed, dead in a doorway near 15th Avenue – just a couple of kilometers from his home. Two weeks earlier I had sushi and beer with him after a movie at Van Ness.

I met Jordan because he is – no, he was, I still think of him as alive – my French friend Marie’s flatmate. Marie was living with Elisa and Jordan who had been a couple for seven years. He was 23, smiling, had curly brown hair, a great sense of humor and a genuine kindness to his way of being that made me immediately like him.

Marie was in the shower Wednesday when she heard Elisa. At first Marie thought she was laughing because Elisa is always laughing. Then she realised it was screams and crying out of the deepest despair. Worrying why Jordan had not come home, Elisa had called SFPD and the police told her they had found his body.

So why was he shot? Who did it? No one knows. There are no eye witnesses. Jordan had been at his work in Berkeley, where he is – no, was – doing special effects on an upcoming Bruce Willis movie. He then went to say goodbye to a friend who was going on a trip. It was on his way back from this that he was killed.

The police says it is looking for two suspects. Apparently they approached Jordan and got into a verbal fight whereafter they shot him and fled the scene, but it was only seen from a distance. They did not touch Jordan’s $1000 bicycle or his backback, nothing was stolen.

Marie called me Wednesday, crying. Elisa had gone to her parents and Marie did not want to be alone in the flat so I met her at Church Station and we went to my place. I only found out Jordan was dead when I met Marie. It was surreal, unreal. Truly like a bad dream. She was crying in my arms and it felt so fictional, like I was a puppet in a play. Only now, days later, do I feel like it really happened and Jordan was shot – tears are streaming from my eyes as I write it out. But I still cannot believe he is gone. He is no more. I cannot comprehend it.

The papers have written about it to. I ripped the article out of The Examiner, but you can read about it online as well in both The Examiner and The San Francisco Cronicle. Reading about it in other places makes it feel less like a dream.

The murder does not make me scared, only deeply sad. But I guess it is dangerous here compared to home. San Francisco had an average of 93 murders a year over the last three years, peaking in 2007 with a decade-high 98 homicides. So far there have been 78 this year. In Denmark there has been an average of 60 murders a year since 1995 and the last time it was above 60 was in 2003, according to Danish Statistics. So San Francisco has about 55% more murders in absolute numbers. When compoared to the Danish population, which is seven times larger than San Francisco’s, there are roughly 11 times more homicides here than in Denmark.

Now, I want to write about how the imbicil Americans should quit their obsession with the second amendment and make it hard to get a gun. I feel strongly about this but right now I can only think about Jordan and how it feels so strange that he is never going to come back, never going to breathe again or kiss Elisa or turn 24.

I cannot help but feel it is unfair. I always thought, logically, that life is chance and we must all cope with that. That the whole why-do-bad-things-happen-to-good-people was something that people should not complain about because that is just life. But now that it is death, and sorrow squeezes my heart, it really strikes me.

Even though there is no such thing as justice this feels profoundly unjust. I guess that is life. We are all just puppets in a cruel play co-directed by chance and time. The famous MacBeth quote comes to mind:

“Life is but a walking shadow

A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot

Full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.”

But I will not succumb to nihilism and despair. Moments when lives are shaken, even ended, should make us value life the higher. We should all strive to feel joy and spread it to others. With that, I will end this entry…