There is something particularly unsettling about a death for which there appears, on the surface, to be no clear explanation. It shakes you to the core.
It was early Sunday morning in Courtenay Street, the same familiar stretch of road many of us travel without a second thought.
But for one 21-year-old man, an ordinary night ended in tragedy. In the drive-through at McDonald's, an encounter with a group of men turned violent. He suffered a stab wound to the chest and could not be saved.
The police are still piecing together what happened. We don't yet know what sparked the altercation - and perhaps that uncertainty is what makes it so unsettling.
McDonald's is not some distant, unfamiliar place. I was there myself only two days earlier.
That is when the uncomfortable thought creeps in: It could have been me. It could have been someone I love.
Wrong place, wrong time? Perhaps.
Only days earlier, a George couple were driving home from Victoria Bay when some rocks were thrown at their vehicle from the old railway bridge, smashing the rear window. They escaped unharmed, but it could so easily have ended differently.
And 11 days before the Courtenay Street incident, motorsport champion Robert Wolk (41) was shot and killed in Kempton Park. Again, something seemingly ordinary ended in death.
A drive. A disagreement. An encounter between strangers. Moments that should pass and be forgotten suddenly become the dividing line between before and after for an entire family.
We cannot move through every ordinary day expecting the worst. Yet incidents such as these expose an uncomfortable vulnerability.
Because Courtenay Street is our street. Victoria Bay is our beach. These are familiar places, part of our everyday lives.
They are ordinary. Until, in one terrible moment, they aren't.
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