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Manhattan Assassination

Harry Hogg
3 min readDec 5, 2024

December 4th, Jenny’s birthday.

Image: Author — back home safely. 65 and one day old.

It was a quick decision to go to New York for Jenny’s birthday. I booked at the Warwick Hotel, thinking I might get a room with a view over Manhattan. We arrived on Tuesday and had the restaurant picked out for Jenny’s treat the following evening.

Well, no need to tell you what went down.

We were woken to the sounds of sirens, not unusual in Manhattan, but this time, it wasn’t a single police car or a fire truck; it was tens and tens of cop cars filling 6th Avenue and 54th.

The first we heard it was a shooting was half an hour later. We turned on the television news in the hotel room. The victim was shot dead by a masked gunman, but still, we had no idea who the victim was; an hour later, that news came through the CEO of UnitedHealth.

Outside, the streets were in chaos, police everywhere, and as we listened, we learned the gunman was still on the loose. We had every intention of being at the restaurant, a half mile away in a taxi, a fifteen-minute walk, but there would be no celebration. Jenny wanted a flight home.

We booked and were out of there within hours. The hardest part was leaving Manhattan. Bridges were being shut down, and there was total chaos. We made it out, and Jenny felt a lot calmer. She doesn’t do well with violence. It was…

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