It's been more than a month since the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and things were finally settling down. Were, that is, until we woke up this morning to news that a man named Ibragim Todashev, thought to be a friend of bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had been killed by an FBI agent during an altercation in Florida.
That sense of security that had washed back over you as the headlines shifted away from the Tsarnaev brothers and back to Kim Kardashian's shoes? That's gone now, isn't it?
So far the FBI isn't telling us much about Todashev, aside from the fact that he was Chechnyan, had been linked to the elder Tsarnaev brother, and once lived in Boston. He was killed by an agent who reportedly felt that he was "under threat."
It's the relationship with Tsarnaev and the fact that he was being questioned about it that makes the whole case so confusing.
Was he involved in the bombing?
Is there more going on than the feds are telling us?
Is this nightmare ever going to be over?
We want this to just be something two bad men did in their spare time, by themselves. It would be nice if this could all be wrapped up in a neat little package, give the families of the victims closure, and give average Americans a warm, fluffy security blanket to duck our heads back under.
Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. And whether Todashev was involved in the bombing or not, the murky details around his death remind us that there are more violent people out there, some who may well carry the same anti-American feelings of the bombers.
We may have gotten to the bottom of the story behind the Boston bombing. But the fight to keep America safe is never truly over.
Were you starting to feel safe again or is this just something you expected?
Image via o.maloteau/Flickr