Column: Trying to make sense of senseless police shooting

Where were the angels?

Where were they during the steamy night hours this morning when they should have been gliding over the darkened streets of the city?

It's not easy for those of us of faith; those of us who believe that there is some divine reason and purpose to things, to comprehend what happened in only seconds.

I can't even buy the explanation that this was just a nightmarish convergence of random violence in a violent society in a bad part of town. I understand that being in harm's way is the nature of the profession of the men and women who sign on to do the work of protecting the rest of us. But you want more. You want an explanation for it all and there is none.

It is more than two lives lost. It is shattered generations, past and future. It is family and friends. It is children born and even yet to be born whose lives now will have to confront the terrible stain of what happened while most of us were sleeping.

Where were the angels?

We reluctantly have come to accept that these tragedies have little rational explanation. It has been less than a year since Tampa police Cpl. Mike Roberts stopped a man pushing a shopping cart in Sulphur Springs on an August day. Roberts was 38 years old. He left a wife and a son.

Now we are left with this. Officer Dave Curtis was 31 years old. He leaves behind a wife and four sons, from 9 years to 8 months of age. Imagine the road that lies in front of his new widow, Kelly. Thank God for the Gold Shield Foundation that George Steinbrenner set up. It will help the four boys get an education.

But the foundation cannot replace the father.

Remember the smiling face of Tampa Police Officer Jeffrey Kocab. I'm told he was one of the really good guys.

He was 31 years old. His wife, Sara, is nine months pregnant. How can this happen?

Where were the angels?

There isn't much good that happens in town at 2:15 in the morning. I spent some time in the military police and know that you approach suspicious cars and characters with caution. You might have only an instant to react.

By all accounts Curtis, who had almost four years with the department and who was a Hillsborough County deputy before that, was doing everything right when he called for backup and Kocab showed up. There was nothing good about anything in that particular situation. It was the wrong time and not the best part of town. There was reason to suspect the occupants of the car were bad news.

Still it happened. Just like that the two officers were mortally wounded, one trying to help the other.

It's going to be a long time before the city recovers from what happened while it slept. There will be memorials and tributes. The mayor and officials will speak and people will weep. There will be a long procession of law enforcement vehicles out to the cemetery. Two more names will be added to the stark police memorial downtown and life will go on.

For the families left behind the world has changed. They are fortunate only in that there is a brotherhood within the department that once again will come together and be there for the widows and their children. It is a bond that outsiders can sense but perhaps not fully understand.

For the rest of us there is little we can do other than bow our heads in tribute for two brave men. We can ask for mercy for their families and wonder, on one dark night in our city, where were the angels?