As almost everyone has probably heard on the national news, a gunman walked into a downtown shopping mall in Salt Lake City last night and started randomly firing a shotgun, killing 5 people and wounding 4 more. (
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_5218341) Trolley Square mall is a hip downtown shopping center with cool restaurants and high-end retailers. I wasn't a witness to the massacre, but I came way, way too close...
Yesterday, at 10am, a coworker came around our office with a set of Jazz tickets to last night's game. He couldn't go, so I took the tickets and called my friend to join me. Usually when we find ourselves in Salt Lake, we often eat at a restaurant called the Desert Edge pub, mostly because they have a funky atmosphere and the most fantastic pasta salad. The pub is located inside Trolley Square. After some foiled plans to go there for lunch this past weekend, we agreed to eat there for dinner before the game last night, which would have been around 6pm.
On the drive up to Salt Lake, my friend, out of nowhere, interrupted a story I was telling him with this: "Wait............let's go to the Porcupine Grill instead." Having never heard of this place, from him or anyone else, I asked him where it was. "On the east side, at the base of the canyon." (note: very far away from Trolley Square and the Energy Solutions Center, Jazz' homebase) I then asked him what kind of food they served. "Just trust me, " he said. This struck me as weird, a weird answer to my question. And it didn't really sound like my friend talking.....unusual.....
So we had dinner at Porcupine and went to the Jazz game (and they won!). On the way out, I checked my voicemail and heard a message from my mom about the shooting she saw on the news. She updated me on what she had heard, but it wasn't until we got in our car and turned on the radio to hear the report when it hit me. We would have been there.
After hearing the random reports from witnesses on the news here in Utah, and stringing together our timeline had we followed our original plans, we would have been either getting our check at the restaurant inside the mall or possibly walking down the main stairway facing the gunman as he entered the mall. I sobbed for a few hours last night, totally shaking at the thought of "What if?" What a blessing for us to suddenly change our plans and end up safely away from the scene of such senseless violence...must have been divine intervention.....
We talked later about how one meaningless decision like where to eat dinner could have you fighting for your life. My friend joked about wearing his seat belt from now on (he hardly ever does) because there is no reason to tempt fate...you just never know. I have a fresh perspective on life today. Someone once said, "Yesterday is history, tomorrow's a mystery, but today is a gift...and that's why we call it 'the present'."
Words never rang more true.
