blogs/rabbi-huberman

In 1976, as a rookie reporter for the Ottawa Citizen, I stumbled upon a heartbreaking story which haunts me to this day.

At first glance, it may seem humorous, but upon closer inspection, it is tragic.

One morning, I sat before a Staff Sergeant of the Ottawa Police Department as he thumbed through the evening police reports. After a moment he pulled one from the pile and said, “This one may be of interest.”

The officer recounted the story of a man who, the previous evening, had attempted to rob a 7�"Eleven store, but as he approached the counter, he tripped on a vacuum cord, fell on his face, and was captured soon after.

As he languished in the holding cell on the second floor of the police station, he noticed that the metal door had been left slightly ajar. As an act of complete despair, he slipped out of the cell, opened up the second floor window and jumped.

Unfortunately, as he plummeted towards the pavement, he landed on a senior police officer on his way to work, killing the man, while sustaining a broken leg himself.

At first, we both nervously chuckled: this must have been world's worst hard luck story. But then I decided to dig a bit deeper.

As I would later find out, the unsuccessful thief, due to an economic downturn, had recently lost his job, and soon after, his marriage ended. Cut off from his children, he turned to alcohol. His attempts to receive social assistance had proven unsuccessful. His effort to rob the 7�"Eleven was an act of total desperation.

I often wondered, in a story that as I recall was relegated to the bottom half of Page 8, whether this man'