There was a period of violence here in our area way back when, and the homicide trials that followed. I was throwing the bull with one of our engineers one afternoon. He is one of the smartest people I ever worked with. He had spent some time working in Detroit, a city known for its violence. The engineer remarked that northeastern Pennsylvania was different. People here, said the engineer, kill people they know. He added it wasn't like Detroit, where random mini mart clerks were killed during robberies.
That conversation flashed in to my memory last week, after a man walked into a mini mart in Scranton. He shot the clerk and a customer. One died. The other survived. It wasn't far from the scene where a Scranton Police officer was shot in the head and nearly killed in January.
Friends, welcome to Detroit.
