Police escorts

Now and then it happens that you see some motorized police escorting a fancy car through traffic. It always triggers curiosity and frustration. Curiosity as I always want to know who got that escort: does the numberplate looks like 01 or 02 or ...(royal family), is it a P... numberplate (parliament representatives), does it have little flags (foreign heads of state), ... But usually it is really none of those and I just remain behind wondering frustrated why those other persons happen to be so special that they get to cruise through traffic?

This morning when leaving Leuven, I spotted the orangje helmets as well of the motorized police when they left the highway , with a big bus on their tail and some more police. On the bridge there was more motorized police on the look-out as if they were expecting more busses or cars to take this exit to get escorted. In the bus there were young people with sweaters on with some little stripes on its sleeves. Huh? Who the hell were they?
While I drove onwards, I notice the exceptionally high number of police vehicles driving in the direction of Leuven. They came from different districts.

Then I finally realised that they were all going to the funeral of Kitty Van Nieuwenhuyze. She was a young police inspector, 23 years old and graduated last year from the police academy. She joined the police force in a little town at the outskirts of Brussels. Last Tuesday she responded with her partner an emergency call of a potential break and entry/robbery. When arriving on the scene, they got caught immediately in a rain of gun fire. Kitty has even never been able to get out of their police car.

When seeing those busses with young police inspectors on their way to their colleague's funeral, the tragedy hit me much more than when I had heard the news on the radio the week before. All of a sudden I didn't feel like singing along with the radio anymore on my way to work. Sometimes this world doesn't make sense at all.