Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge

accounts from residents whose slumber had been disturbed by the high-powered crackling of a weapon of war and who were now disoriented as they struggled to relate their versions of events to the dispassionate voice of a civil servant seeking hard, actionable information on the other end of the line.
    “I’m at Three Fountains West apartments. And I think I heard gunshots. And then people running through right past my house,” a third caller says in breathless, abrupt sentences. “I heard the shots. And as soon as I looked out the window there were two gentlemen running right past my house. And I saw them stop.”
    “Okay are they white, black, Hispanic?” asks the controller.
    There’s a long pause.
    “They are black. And they’re wearing black.”
    “Both wearing black?”
    “So my roommate says the victim was shot right in front of his room.”
    “He saw this happen?”
    “He didn’t see it. He heard it. And looked out the window. He saw that he fell.”
    The next caller is clearly terrified. “Me, my baby, and my boyfriend were in the house and then we heard a gunshot. My window. . . . My wall is just. . . . ” A bullet had just gone through her window. As she loses her train of thought, her boyfriend takes over, his tone more fretful and urgent. “They’re shooting from my house. We’re at Falcon Crest watching TV. I need to get out of here. Can you get a car so I can get out of here? I don’t want to be in this area.”
    “I think there’s several officers already over there,” the dispatcher says.
    “I don’t want to be in this area. What the hell.” He’s breathing hard.
    “There are so many officers over there,” the controller says, trying to reassure him. “You’re going to be okay now. Okay. There’s a lot of them over there.”
    He’s not listening. He’s instructing his girlfriend to gather their things. “Put the stuff in the baby bag. Find it tomorrow. We’ll carry it to a hotel.” His breathing is still labored.
    “We’re going to let them know,” says the controller.
    “How long is it going to take?” he asks.
    “You want to leave now?”
    “Yeah, we just want to sleep in a hotel.”
    His girlfriend returns to the phone. “Hello ma’am. We’ve got a young two-month-old baby.”
    “I understand.”
    “So we really want to leave now, okay?” she says. “We really want to leave.”
    The controller is getting testy. “I understand, ma’am, I’ve already told you that we’re going to get an officer inside your house, okay? They’re really busy out there. There’s a lot going on out there. They’ll be with you as soon as they can. But I’ll let them know that you want to leave and you want to go to a hotel. They’ll be there as soon as they can, alright? As soon as they can? As. Soon. As. They. Can. To talk to you, okay? Just stay inside your apartment. Do not go out. We’ll get an officer to you.”
    “Alright. Thanks.”
    Three Fountains West is in a curious part of Indianapolis where country, town, and suburb meet but don’t match. Within a three-minute drive you can be on the interstate, on a horse, in a box store, in an apartment, or in a town house. But Three Fountains West, a housing cooperative, is pleasant. It reminded me of the English new town that I grew up in during the seventies: newly built, affordable, cookie-cutter homes, with yards front and back, decent amenities—a few playgrounds, a community center, a swimming pool with a slide—and well-tended green space. A three-bedroom town house here goes for $620 a month, with management promising to “provide that ‘at home’ feeling without the hassles of home ownership.” 1 According to the website of the censustract (a relatively small area usually comprising a few thousand people), this was the most diverse of all the places where kids got shot that day (62 percent black, 15 percent white, 20 percent Latino). 2
    The police got to Three Fountains West very quickly. They had been