With the gun massacre in Alabama and the homicide here in Austin, the news has turned pretty grim of late.
For non-locals coming in from out of town, I want to add some context to the above-linked local story so you don't go fearing for your life walking down 6th Street to the Alamo Ritz. Austin is still one of the safest cities in the country as long as you don't do something stupid.
Fat Tuesday, this girl was out partying and drinking on 6th Street, Austin's version of Calle Ocho in Miami. Every college town has a doppelganger of this place downtown. She was out with friends, one of whom is the daughter of a woman who works in my wife's office. The persons of interest appear to be a Mexican woman and her husband.
Christy Espinoza, the victim, for yet-unknown reasons, apparently got into a car with them. My wife's coworker says her daughter said Christy "went to the bathroom" and never came back. There's no reporting about drugging or kidnapping as yet. She was apparently suffocated using plastic wrap and then her body was dumped and burned with gasoline that the man was seen on surveillance cameras purchasing at a local gas station.
If the incident were a movie, it would be a mixture flashback/howdunnit murder film combined with the survival horror "everything goes to hell" plot. When I watch those movies, I think as I do about this thing, "who thought any part of either person's plan was a good idea?" The girl drinking her head off beyond the point she could reasonably make decisions for herself and the alleged killers deciding that killing her or burning her body would do anything but make things worse.
The binge-drinking, carefree-partying lifestyle that is in the mutant DNA of college towns is an absolute aberration. By no means am I saying that Christy got what she had coming to her, not at all. This is a horrendous tragedy, the full details of which are not yet known. We don't know if there was rohypnol or another drug used, or what the motive was.
Regardless, there's a lot of societal blame to go around. It's been endorsed and repeatedly reinforced, this notion that going out and getting stupid drunk is fine and great fun and completely safe. Even when with a group, people do things like take drinks from strangers, wander off alone, and comport themselves as if their actions are selectively eligible for deletion from the collective unconscious.
Everyone be careful and sensible this week. It's not that you need to be worried being in Austin, but everyone could use a "don't let your guard down" now and then.