Late night calls

There is a certain time of night that when your phone rings, you just know it's not going to be anything good.

My phone rang last night after I went to bed. It was one of those calls. A young woman had been in an accident at a notoriously dangerous intersection I have done a lot stories about. This was the first fatality, to my knowledge.

I had to make a decision. Go to the scene, or get the information in the morning. Hubby was pissed. He thinks I take my job too far. Not wanting to deal with his issues, coupled with the fact that I still haven't adjusted to the nuances of radio reporting and I was kind of fuzzy from sleep, I decided to chase the story in the morning.

It was a bad call on several levels.

I ended up spending hours trying to pin down facts I could have easily already had if I'd just gone to the scene. And the 19 year-old girl was the niece of one of our sheriff's deputies, so I really wanted to do a good job for him and his family. Those are my guys.

My guys from the TVFD (and Tina) were also first on the scene and had to go through the trauma of working it. I should have been there.

Anyway. This was on the heels of a chartered bus full of high school girls on a soccer team from Beaumont overturning yesterday afternoon, killing two of the girls and seriously injuring more.

So many young lives wiped out in a day. So many families in pain.

And I'm bitching about not making a scene.