We recognized and acknowledged, too, the rituals that accompany such deaths — the television pictures of swaths of flowers that transform murder spots into temporary shrines; the bewildered expressions of those who lay them; the white-suited forensic experts carrying plastic bags; the voices of politicians in competitive condemnation.
"It's easier, quite frankly, to cover car wrecks, murders and spot news," said Cliff Williams, managing editor of WFAA.
While the figures theoretically means a person is 25 times more likely to be murdered in Brazil than in the UK, the detailed mapping of trends and murder "hot spots" shows the risks for most people are falling.
Criminologists and ex-cops have suggested all manner of tweaks to policy and procedure, from changing protocol for investigations to better funding homicide units in poor communities (investigating murders is expensive) to overhauling the deployment and priorities of officers in murder hot spots.
While reviewing surveillance tapes from an elevator in the apartment complex where Maldonado was murdered, police spotted Chris Grant violently attacking his girlfriend's dog.
This was murder on the spot.
Instead, the Mail fills its front page with a murder story, a spot of terrorism, a story about a television soap opera and a plug for a new diet plan.
CBS will either plug that new show into the "Murder, She Wrote" spot on Sunday at 8 P.M. hoping to hold the Angela Lansbury fans, or else, Mr. Poltrack said, it will try something even harder: replacing Miss Lansbury on "Murder, She Wrote" with a new star.
The idea of planning a mass murder at a spot with such an unimpeachable mission adds an extra layer of horror to Wednesday's tragedy.
One of the things mentioned was the possibility of them being murdered on the spot.
