Caught in the Cross-Fire

Last night I wanted a “licuado” or smoothie for dinner. There’s a licuado shop about two blocks from our house. Max and I walked there together. I was feeling adventurous and had the orange mango instead of the strawberry, orange, banana that I always have. Max had the usual lime and soda. On our way out we heard screeching tires and the sound of a car hitting something. We looked to our right and saw that an SUV had hit a guy on a bike, some 500 yards down the road from where we were standing. The cyclist was on the floor, and people close to him came to his aid. The guy took a few long seconds to gather himself, and it looked like he had a broken leg. As soon as the driver of the SUV saw the guy wasn’t dead, he ran for it, driving in our direction, and leaving the guy on the bike hurt on the street. I was so enraged; I wanted to hurt the guy on the SUV. Apparently so did one of the rescuers. He took his gun out and shot a bullet. I was convinced he shot in the direction of the car, which at the moment had been driving right past us. I still feel the sound of the gun shot pounding on my chest. Max says he shot the bullet up to the sky and not towards us. We hid behind a small three to make sure there wasn’t going to be another gun shot, and saw a few cars run after the SUV. I hope they caught him.

This is the second time something like this has happened near us in the last few months. (The other one involved a car hitting a motorbike in front of the video store we were at. Two guns were pulled out, a young woman was screaming, and the manager of the store intervened to prevent them from killing each other. We watched everything from the window of the video store, about five yards away.) Unlike the last time, last night I slept like a baby.

I know this kind of thing happens all over the world. They just seem to happen a little too often in Honduras.