When the ominous words "radio silence" came across the scanner sometime after 3 p.m. Tuesday, the feeling of dread began to set in.

It only increased as police vehicles with flashing lights and screaming sirens began to fly past my Delhi office.

I was finishing up two stories and listening intently for any hint of what might be going on when the phone rang at about 3:45 p.m. and Cary Brunswick, Daily Star managing editor, told me that a state trooper had been shot at a gas station in Margaretville.

Adrenaline instantly began rushing through my system as I grabbed a notebook, camera and pen and head for my car. I didn’t know which gas station, what trooper, if the shooting was fatal or what kind of a situation I was driving into.

After close to 20 years reporting news in Delaware County, I have covered more incidents involving deaths than I care to recall, but every time a new event occurs, all the others begin to crowd back into my head.

As I headed toward Margaretville, I prayed this wouldn’t be a fatality. When I arrived and parked as close to the Sunoco Country Store as I could, people on the street were already passing the word that the trooper was not seriously injured.

Gathering facts when a story is unfolding usually involves finding witnesses because authorities never share any official information.

The shooting had taken place an hour and a half before I got there, but people tend to band together and stay in the area when unbelievable events occur.

Staying in touch with the editors in Oneonta is vital when a story is breaking, but there is virtually no cell-phone coverage in Margaretville, and the only pay phone near the scene was inside the Country Store, which was roped off with yellow police tape.

After gathering what information I could at the Country Store, I stopped at Summerfield’s restaurant, where they were kind enough to call a man that had witnessed the shooting so I could talk to him. Then they let me call the Star newsroom.

As I exchanged what I knew and compared it with what Cary had learned from bulletins being issued by the state police, the waitress stood by, listening.

When I finished my call, she said, "Wow, they don’t make this easy on you, do they? I never realized how hard it is to get information when something like this happens."

When I finally left Margaretville on Tuesday night and headed back to my office to write my story, the news wasn’t good, but it hadn’t turned horrible yet. The shooter was known to be armed and on foot in the Searles Road area, but Trooper Matthew Gombosi was not seriously injured.

Wednesday morning, on my way to my office, that feeling of dread resurfaced when two unmarked state police cars with lights flashing raced past me as I drove to Delhi.

When I unlocked my door, the phone was ringing and I got the word that two troopers had been shot, one fatally, and the shooter was holed up in a house.

The trip back to Margaretville felt like a nightmare I just wanted to wake up from.

Gathering facts was a little easier because press conferences were being held to update the army of reporters and photographers that had descended on the quiet little village.

However, as the day wore on and eventually ended with Travis Trim dead in an inferno, getting answers to the nagging questions appeared impossible.

Why Margaretville? What happened that launched Trim on his death mission? How did the fire start? How and when did Trim die? Why do these things happen?

I was back in Margaretville again Thursday, this time to see if things were returning to some state of normalcy. It was easier, but no less upsetting, to talk to people.

The events of the previous 36 hours were all that people seemed to be talking and speculating about.

When I returned to my office, I had an anonymous phone call accusing me of not getting the story right in Wednesday’s paper. There were no specifics about what was wrong, and no one else has called to complain.

But I did try to report the correct facts, even though there will never be anything right about this story.

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Staff Writer Patricia Breakey covers Delaware County.