On Tuesday morning at about 8:35, November 13, I meandered to the PVTA bus stop near the Academy of Music and Pulaski Park in order to catch the Express over to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. There were about twenty of us milling about and commuter traffic was picking up along Main Street.
Near the Pulaski Park entrance to Memorial Hall a man wearing a red coat and white pants was down on the ground. He was moving his legs a bit, but not much. A man I recognized as a municipal employee stood over him and of course this caught the eyes of others at the bus stop. We stood and watched and after a few minutes a Northampton Police Officer arrived and a few minutes after that an ambulance pulled up.
Emergency rescue personnel approached the man and gently strapped him onto a body board. They placed a brace around his neck and situated him onto a gurney in order to wheel him to the waiting ambulance that was parked on Main Street. It was plain that he was not doing well and as he was wheeled past us about thirty feet from where we stood, I could see that his face was covered in blood. He wasn’t fully conscious and it looked as though he might have been beaten. I couldn’t speculate as to who he is or why he was in such a condition though. There could be many reasons, including deserved ones.
I looked for reports in the local papers as they monitor daily the police logs, and could find none. With the city registering its third public death in less than a month, (One man hung himself from the Mill River bridge on Smith College’s campus, another jumped to his death from the E.J. Gare parking garage, and a third was found dead from exposure near the bike path behind Liquors 44 on King Street.) it is clear that all is not well for everyone in Paradise City.
