“I guess the boy just snapped.”

This was one way to describe the carnage wreaked by James Michael Peters along Minot Avenue in Auburn on March 30. The 42-year-old, who reputedly suffered from mental illness, executed his mother and shot at police, until meeting his own violent end after a 17-hour standoff.

The above quote was spoken to a Portland Press Herald reporter by one of the Peters’ neighbors. Few of them seemed to know the victim, Margaret Peters, all that well, but many had an inkling her living situation was less than ideal, and perhaps dangerous.

Neighbors knew, for example, “Mike” Peters wore a big gold medallion and always drove with the windows down, regardless of weather. They saw him fire gunshots at wildlife on the Little Androscoggin River, which snaked through the backyard. They knew his mother bought him video games that cost hundreds of dollars.

And they knew he would scream, and be “rowdy,” with his mother, and hold loud parties. They knew his deceased father Wilbur, the “nicest guy you’d ever want as a neighbor,” and they knew the story of Wilbur’s tragic death from choking on a piece of food.

Despite all this knowledge, the shocking death of Margaret Peters has been greeted by much disbelief, but little detail. Of all the subtexts to this tragedy, this is the most disheartening. It describes neighbors best known to each other from observation only, as most assessments of the Peters, so far, have been based on snapshots of behavior.

Several other important subtexts – untreated mental illness, firearm ownership, elder abuse – are prevalent in this tragedy. But it’s the lack of knowledge about the Peters that gets us, because of them all, it’s the most curable.

So often, in tragedies like these, there’s a sense of “Wow, you’d never thought it could happen here.” Yet warning signs, such as those allegedly displayed like Mike Peters, become glaringly obvious under the hot lights of hindsight.

Something bad was happening inside the Peters home, something maybe inevitable, or perhaps avoidable. We’ll never know. People along Minot Avenue acknowledged some strange activity. We know what happened next.

The boy just snapped.

How many of us really know our neighbors? Traditional social connections like these are steadily fading, and it’s unsettling to think we’ll know more about our neighbors after their death, rather than their life, when opportunities to say hello, or simply ask if everything is OK, are omnipresent.

This shooting on Minot Avenue was a rare occurrence, surely, and won’t soon be repeated. Not knowing neighbors, though, is becoming all too frequent. Walking across the street takes no time at all, and there’s no better time than a holiday – like Easter – to try it.

Who knows whose life could be saved by doing so.