Laura and I took a little midwinter getaway to our closest subtropical metropolis, Tucson. We arrived on Sunday, the day after the shooting. By some coincidence, our motel was located on the same road as the massacre, and it turned out that we would be driving right past the scene of the crime on our way to Biosphere 2 on Monday. So, being tourists, we decided to stop at the shopping center and gawk.
TV news in Tucson gave frequent updates from the shopping center. Here, a newsman awaits his cue. Notice the bright TV lighting on his face. The infamous Safeway is in the background.
A team of FBI and other law enforcement perform an evidence sweep. Nearly 48 hours after the shooting, I'm not sure what they expected to find. Probably these late sweeps were a combination of covering their ass, and giving the law enforcement personnel something to do. Surely the obvious evidence (shell casings) was collected immediately after the shooting.
I was expecting to find an impromptu shrine to the victims, but the shrine turned out to be located at the University Medical Center, located several miles away. More details on this in my next post.
UPDATE: After we got home, we discovered that the night before the shootings, Loughner had rented a room in the same motel we stayed at. This helps explain the weird behavior of the motel clerk when she checked us in.
