It was a big day for rumors on the UTMB campus. The first one spread like the wildfires that are scorching forests and homes out west. The word was that a person had been shot in the Clinical Science Building. Someone said they heard it, others saw the blood. With Virginia Tech still on people’s minds, a lot of people got worked up pretty quick. Like in most cases, something happened, just not what people were hearing and repeating. You may have seen an advisory we posted later: a gunshot victim was looking for the ER, and having been dropped off (my guess) near the Ninth St. traffic circle, came in the entrance at Clinical Science. Police were on the spot within moments and—with the medical team—got him to the ER. My guess is we’ll read more about this in the paper tomorrow; I hear the shooting took place someplace mid-island. Unfortunately, as someone pointed out, while they usually enter in a more direct fashion, gunshot victims aren’t that unusual in our (or any) ER.
Second big rumor is still raging. It says that TxDot is planning to close the Gulf Freeway for the next 5 weekends. From July 20 to August 20, it will be closed from Friday at 9:00 pm to Monday at 5:00 am each weekend. It says the work has to be done on the weekends and involves a full closure because of needed overhead work and a danger of items dropping on traffic. Call me a skeptic, but personally, I don’t see how this could possibly be true. For starters, half our weekend workforce would be stranded at work or at home. And we haven’t heard a word through any of our normal channels, which would be very odd for something slated to start this weekend. I’d suggest sitting tight on this one; don’t flame the fire or start bombarding anyone with email or phone calls until we all can get more verifiable info. I’ll post what I can find out.