A 911 call and then....

The following compilation of videos and commentary is dedicated to:

--Everyone who knew Shawn Kim, everyone who helped nab his killer, and everyone remembering what a great guy he must have been.

--All the transit drivers who will be working through the holiday season, especially the ones who deliberately choose routes that come with different difficulties

--Everyone whose holidays include transit and especially when holiday dramas spill over on the ride to or from festivities (count a couple mildly memorable moments from the RantFamily.)

--Everyone who, like RantWoman, thanks our drivers when we get off the bus. This social point is one reason RantWoman is not necessarily eager to consign bus driving to some kind of robot overlords.

Happy Holidays!

Drivers who choose to drive the night runs.

Like everyone else whose lives are entwined with transit, RantWoman was outraged to wake up last week to news of the stabbing of Shawn Kim.

RantWoman has seen plenty of times when drivers were able to deescalate all kinds of extremely stressful situations. People sleeping on buses also often do not react well when drivers waken them at the ends of routes. Murder is horrifying.

The stream of details becomes more heartbreaking with every new media account.

Rant: the murder occurred in the U district. Were there no University police anywhere in the area? Transit police are from the King County Sheriff Office, but do local police routinely respond if a 911 call comes from a specific jurisdiction?

RantWoman is really grateful for comments from people who knew Mr. Kim. RantWoman totally sympathizes with grieving relatives who really might have no mental space for media figures sticking microphones in their faces. At the same time, at this point, enough images of the suspect. How about more images of the murdered public servant?

Bananas did not go to the vigil

RantWoman apologizes if the heading above sounds flip.

RantWoman is very glad there was a vigil. RantWoman expressed interest in finishing off her day of errands with a stop at the vigil, more or less on RantWoman's way home anyway. 

But RantWoman scored bananas at a very cool new supermarket she will celebrate separately. 

And, completely unsurprisingly, there was a Metro alert advising riders to expect delays on every bus route that travels through the crime scene. So, RantWoman picked a different route home; the video will have to be enough for now, and not enough of course for all the events every day on Metro.

Description!

RantWoman, like a lot of armchair experts on social media would not have minded more of a description of the suspect sooner. Too much of the social media RantWoman saw was certain the killer must be Black. Like every transit driver in the area, RantWoman was glad to have enough of a description to rule out a lot of the riding public. 6'5" and white comes with a pretty definite body characteristic more useful to RantWoman than brown hair and brown eyes as well as some expectations about voice.

RantWoman is very thankful not to have encountered the killer.

RantWoman is very glad drivers had the description!

Arrest: a secure place to sleep.

RantWoman comment: this is pretty much a picture-perfect arrest from the police perspective. Completely cooperative suspect. No altercation of any kind. RantWoman also only sees white faces.

We are all grateful that this guy will have a secure place to sleep for a long time, without even any bus drivers to wake him up at the end of every run he lands on.