Almost witnesses

Though we did have a wonderful time in Williamsburg this weekend, there was one really freaky thing that happened. Well, it was over by the time we arrive at the location, which we now know we are VERY thankful for.
On our way to turn in my stolen silverware at the University Center at William & Mary, we saw that the Zable Stadium parking lot was roped off with police tape. We parked further down the road and started walking through the parking lot on our way to the UC. It's a small parking lot with only two rows of parking spaces, so we weren't far from all the activity. There was an SUV that appeared to have had the driver's side tires blown out, that was smashed into a parked car near the entrance to the parking lot. There must have been six police cars right there, with a lot of officers walking around. We started walking past the scene, speculating on what had happened. Further down the parking lot we noticed that there was more police tape, cordoning off most of the courtyard of the Bryan Complex (dorms that Sarah and I had lived in when we were in college), and there were more police cars. In the middle of the grass, there appeared to be some trash and maybe a jacket or blanket of some sort, and then a much larger shape. The way people were standing around, my mind jumped to the conclusion that it was the body of a dead person.
We were close enough to one of the officers standing around, so I asked him what had happened and he simply said "he ran." I asked who he ran from and the offiicer replied "from a lot of people."

I couldn't take my eyes off the shape that was lying on the ground in the middle of the courtyard. From our vantage point I was unable to rule out that fact that it might have been a body. I wanted to rule out the possibility, but it just looked too much like it could have been one, and the two words the officer had used, "he ran", made it sound like they had done something to stop him from running. It was truly frightening, but I confess that my curiosity was piqued - I wanted to know exactly what had happened. My friends and I debated back and forth about what the shape was, and it seemed I was the most convinced that it could, indeed, have been a person. We went back to our car and as we drove away we saw 3 more police cars pull up, as well as a TV news van. When we got back to our hotel, we looked online to try to find a police report, but we didn't find any.

The next day, Daniel found some news reports and emailed them to us. Thankfully, it hadn't been a body that we saw, but someone had shot himself right there less than an hour before we had gotten there. It's strange that I feel comfort in knowing that the incident involved a man shooting himself, rather than shooting another person. That sense of relief, while it makes sense, still feels wrong.
Here are a first and a second article describing the incident.

We are SO thankful that we hadn't been there earlier. We could definitely have been in harm's way. It's pretty scary to think about.