Prologue
The mother killed her son, who tried to commit suicide.
Disclaimer: I do not own a single one of these characters! My sister, who co-wrote this stuff, doesn't either! I don't even own the text in this chapter! (cookies for the one who knows where it's from ;D )
The tale told at a 1961 awards dinner for the American Association of Forensic Science by Dr. John Harper, president of the association began with the suicide attempt of seventeen-year-old Sydney Barringer in the city of Los Angeles on March 23rd, 1958. He jumped off the roof of a flat, only to get shot on his way down and to land in a just installed safety net.
The coroner ruled that his unsuccessful suicide had suddenly become a successful homicide. To explain, the suicide was confirmed by a note in the right hip pocket of Sydney Barringer. At the same time young Sydney stood on the ledge of this nine-story building an argument swelled three stories below. The neighbors heard, as they usually did, the arguing of the tenants and it was not uncommon for them to threaten each other with a shotgun or one of the many handguns in the house. And when the shotgun accidentally went off Sydney just happened to pass.
Added to this, the two tenants turned out to be Faye and Arthur Barringer, Sydney's mother and Sydney's father. When confronted with the charge, which took some figuring out for the officers on the scene of the crime, Faye Barringer swore she did not know the gun was loaded.
A boy who lived in the building, sometimes a visitor and friend to Sydney Barringer, said that he had seen, six days prior, the loading of the shotgun. It seems that all the arguing and fighting and all of the violence was far too much for Sydney Barringer and, knowing his mother and father's tendency to fight, he decided to do something.
Sydney Barringer jumps from the ninth-floor rooftop. His parents argue three stories below. Her accidental shotgun blast hits Sydney in the stomach as he passes the arguing sixth-floor window. He is killed instantly, but continues to fall only to find, five stories below, a safety net installed three days prior for window washers that would've broken his fall and saved his life if not for the hole in his stomach.
So Faye Barringer was charged with the murder of her son and Sydney Barringer noted as an accomplice in his own death. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just something that happened. This cannot be one of those things. This, please, cannot be that.
Author's note: Thank you for reading! We are trying to update this at least once a week, but it might be more! Don't worry if the story doesn't make sense, it will in the following chapters. If there are any errors in the text, please let us know. English isn't our first language so there might be a few. This is our first fanfiction, so please let us know what you think about it!
Xxx SomeKindOfFan & Kateriina