Premises of an ordinary crime

When you think about it (or even when you don't think about it at all), there's nothing more ordinary than an ordinary crime. That's to say: We have almost nothing to say about such everyday events. So, why shouldn't we say whatever there is?

At the moment I'm writing this blog post, like everybody else, I know nothing whatsoever about a certain 60-year-old notary public named Vincent Passebois who was gunned down yesterday evening in the delightful Provençal town of Carpentras. I imagine that friends and members of his family are devastated by this event, and would like to know how and why it happened... but, for the moment, we would appear to know nothing in this conjectural domain.

If ever the facts concerning the death of a human being were to be described as simple, then we might say that the facts surrounding the assassination of the notary public Vincent Passebois are indeed (at least for the moment) terribly simple.

The parents of Vincent Passebois were pharmacists. A single bullet killed him, around 8 o'clock last night, but there were no witnesses of the crime. A newspaper claims that he was "a man without problems, enthralled by his profession, married, father of children, who had never received threats and was unaware of enemies." In other words, I insist upon the fact that, for the moment, there is nothing whatsoever to say concerning the death of this man.