Misadventure

Not that long after Barack Obama became President of the United States he was faced with a situation that seemed to highlight the uneasy divisions between black and white in his country. A well-known academic who just happened to be black, entered his home at night, by means certainly devious if they had been employed by anyone other than the homeowner.

Professor Henry Louis Gates
and Sgt. James Crowley

Henry Gates, a professor at Harvard University, had just returned to Cambridge after an international trip, to discover his front door was jammed shut. He attempted to force it open. Someone witnessed this, calling police to report a burglary in progress. Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley responded, did not believe Professor Gates' explanation that this was his own home, and charged him with disorderly conduct.

In the ensuing public melee when the incident was reported, President Obama became involved, implying that the incident was an example of racial profiling, and a national debate resulted over whether this represented a legitimate charge. Eventually the charge against Professor Gates was dropped, both he and the arresting officer who was chagrined and insulted that he might be thought of as a racist, were invited to have an informal chat with President Obama over a shared beer.

The incident was an unfortunate one. Many people find themselves locked out of their homes. And they seek means by which they can effect entry that may include trying to open a basement window to slide into the house, or breaking a window to unlock a door, or accessing a ladder from a neighbour to climb to an open second-story window. This incident occurred at night in an otherwise-quiet neighbourhood; it could have happened anywhere, to anyone.

It was embarrassing, all the more so as it gained national attention. In the end, however, the public discussion settled down, and both the arresting officer and the taken-aback professor marked it as a life experience, one they might far preferred to have missed. It might have had far more serious consequences, improbable as that might seem, for the relatively simple and innocent act of attempting ingress to a home of one's own.

It certainly turned out extremely ill for one man, whose home was in Windsor, Ontario, when he found himself locked out of his house. Forty-nine-year-old Reeve Cuerrier, attempted to clamber through a second storey window next to a porch in the backyard of his home. He managed to get his feet and his torso through the window, and must have thought he was 'home-free', and had succeeded in his initiative.

What happened next certainly proved him wrong, and proved also that we never know what comes next. The window slammed down on his chest. And the impact somehow took his life. The man was trapped, incredibly, fatally, within the frame of the window. A call was placed to police when someone in a nearby building looked out on the scene. But when police arrived the man was dead.

And the cause was listed as misadventure, awaiting a post-mortem.