When the Red Sox won, everyone went nuts. Understandably, too; this is Major League Baseball history. So it happened that after the game, everyone piled out of their homes, onto the streets, and headed for Kenmore, where Fenway Park stands.

We wound up on Lansdowne street. Nobody was rioting there; in other parts of Boston, drunken fools were setting fire to cars and destroying property. Where we were, people were simply chanting and yelling; a couple people set fire to newspapers and threw them in the middle of the street, but this was not wanton destruction. It was simply jokers being jokers; nobody got hurt. Yet.

If you read Craigslist’s Rants and Raves section, or any of the major news coverage of what happened, you will get the distinct impression that people were going crazy on Lansdowne, and that horsemen were called in to put down a rioting crowd. It’s unfortunate, too, because I was there, and that isn’t what happened at all.

The riot police showed up pretty quickly. They formed a circle around a burning newspaper, while the crowd basically milled around. Riot squads had also lined up on either end of the street, so it was hard for the crowd to really go anywhere.

After a while, someone deep within the crowd took it upon themselves to hurl a bottle at the police. The glass shattered on the ground, spooked a couple horses, and generally made everyone tense. We started to push backwards, trying to move away from the police, but there really wasn’t any room. Then came another bottle from within the crowd — this time, just a plastic Gatorade bottle. People were starting to really move away (as much as they could) from the police, who were looking pissed.

Pop, pop, pop. One, two, three; just like that. It sounded like a paintball gun, and someone started screaming. I pushed forward a few feet to see a young woman, lying face up on the pavement, covered in blood. She’d been hit in the eye, then smacked her head against the sidewalk. “She’s not moving,” someone shouted. “Help her!”

Someone posted a picture of the wounded girl on Craigslist. I’m not going to put it here; it’s too disturbing.

The police officer who came to take a look was indifferent; he took his time in bringing over another officer, then in calling for an ambulance. At this point, I was doing all I could just to keep the crowd around this girl from trying to “help her”. People seemed to think that crowding around her, perhaps lifting her arm or moving her head, would suddenly improve her condition. It reminded me of a car accident I saw in Moscow: some people panicked, some people tried to move the injured, and most people just stood there, staring. That was about the time that the cops started to push people back with their batons.

I do not support rioters. I do not support looters, vandals, or thugs. I think those people who made a point of being destructive and violent last night deserved to be arrested and hauled in front of a judge. That said, I cannot accept what I’ve heard so many people say in the past 24 hours, that “she had it coming,” or “rioters get what they deserve,” or any such nonsense.

Victoria Snelgrove was not in a riot; Lansdowne Street was probably the calmest place in all of Kenmore when she was shot. Someone threw a Gatorade bottle; that’s all it took for a riot cop to fire indiscriminately into a crowd of bystanders. I don’t believe he was deliberately aiming for the girl, because she wasn’t involved in anything illegal. Whether he felt threatened, panicked, or simply pissed off, this police officer exercised extraordinarily bad judgment — and one young woman paid the ultimate price for his indiscretion.

I just read that the Boston Police Department has accepted full responsibility for Victoria’s death; this is a positive step, but it doesn’t mean that the police officer who shot her will be appropriately disciplined. Drunken college students can be expected to misbehave; what I witnessed on Lansdowne last night was certainly reckless but, for the most part, harmless.

Police officers should know better than to aimlessly fire pepper spray projectiles into a crowd of bystanders. The right to peaceably assemble is fundamental to civil liberties; when a few people in a crowd of thousands decide to break the law, the rest of us do not suddenly turn into criminals. I, for one, hope the police officer who shot Victoria is held accountable.

My heart goes out to the family of Victoria Snelgrove. May she rest in peace.