An explanation for the traffic jam...

Last night I had my weekly Armenian lesson which finished at 7pm. I took the metro home, because I have realized that it's far more comfortable than squishing myself into a marshrutka at rush hour. And it's not that far a walk from the metro stop down the hill to my apartment, especially if the weather's decent.

So when I got out of the metro and up to the street, I saw that there was a huge traffic mess at the giant intersection there. My first thought was that rush hour was a bit worse than usual, but nothing too out of the ordinary--things get backed up when too many marshrutkas try to stop in the same place. So I continued down the hill, stopping in the shoe store with the brief notion of buying some boots (I had scoped them out a few days earlier), but no matter how many times I look at them, I really will just never see myself wearing those super-shiny black vinyl boots. If they were normal black leather, there's a pair I would have already bought....but I digress.

Anyways, I went back out after only a minute or two and realized that I was walking faster than the traffic was moving. And a few seconds later, I realized that hardly any traffic at all was coming up the hill. Once in a while a car would come through, but that was it. I tried to see ahead and caught the brief flash of the lights of a police car--I decided that there must have been an accident somewhere out of sight up ahead...maybe on the bridge? I kept walking. At the bottom of the hill, I saw that the cars going uphill were only ones that were turning right--nothing was coming straight. Then I saw a bit of a caravan of black SUVs, one of which had flashing lights. So I wondered if the president were somewhere in the vicinity and they had closed some roads? Police were directing traffic at the intersection, but of course it was still barely controlled chaos. I made it across the street, went home, and didn't think much more about it.

Until today...when I found out what really happened: http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13544734&PageNum=0

So yes. The deputy police chief was murdered just down the street from where I live. Something like 9 shots were fired into him. He leaves behind a wife and a 5 or 6 month old baby. This is just really sad.