When I walked into my favorite bagel place for breakfast recently, I thought to myself: “Is there a chance I might not leave alive?”

I wasn’t thinking of a medical emergency but of some person coming in off the street and shooting up the place and those of us in it.

Let me quickly say that in the several years since this business opened and I have been a steady customer, there has never been any incident - not even a loud argument - so why should I even harbor such off-the-wall and extreme thoughts?

The proliferation of mass shootings in the United States is the reason, and I suspect that you have had these uneasy thoughts, too, as you ventured out and about, even if they might be fleeting and quickly set aside.

In “How Randomness Rules Our Lives,” Leonard Mlodinow says that the human mind is built to identify a definite cause and can, therefore, have a hard time accepting the influence of unrelated or random factors.

While we have not seen mass shootings in our area - knock on wood - we had one recent incident in the Lehigh Valley which easily could have escalated into one were it not for the swift action of local and state police and the heroics of a Wawa store employee who shepherded at least one customer to safety.

For the record, a “mass shooting” is defined as one in which four or more people are killed/shot, not including the shooter, in a single incident.

Although police are still piecing together the circumstances, their investigation so far shows no motive for why Za Uk Lian, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Myanmar, pulled into a Wawa store just off Route 100 in Upper Macungie Township near Allentown and shot and killed a truck driver fueling his vehicle, shot another man, who was in critical condition at an area hospital, and tried to carjack a vehicle from three other motorists who had pulled into the store’s parking lot for their morning coffee.

He was interrupted by the prompt police response and fled on foot. About a quarter of a mile away, in front of a day care center, he shot and killed himself, taking with him any possible explanation for why he did what he did.

None of these people had any relationship or previous interaction with the shooter, but their lives will be forever changed by the randomness of their chance encounter, and so will those of their families and friends, possibly even those of us who did not know the shooter or any of the other players in this horrible tragedy.

What we want to know is why this man did what he did? We may never find out. We have been told that he was diagnosed with COVID-19 on April 12, nine days before the shootings, but that in itself cannot be a justification for such an extreme act.

Some of the shooter’s friends with whom he shared living accommodations said he was having difficulty fitting in here in the United States because of language and other barriers, but he had never shown signs of aggression nor sent up any red flags to signal what was coming.

For those of you who may not be up on your geography, Myanmar is modern-day Burma in Southeast Asia.

Police said the incident occurred in the predawn darkness as Lian pulled alongside of a woman’s car and fired a shot. Although the woman heard a “bang,” she was unaware that a bullet had been fired into her vehicle until she pulled into the Wawa, purchased a sandwich, then noticed the bullet hole when she was returning to her car.

In the meantime, police said, Lian pulled into the parking lot shortly thereafter and was apparently trying to hijack a vehicle for some unknown reason. He shot one driver and accosted three others in a frantic attempt to escape. He also shot and killed Ramon Ramiriz, 31, of Allentown, who was refueling his truck to begin his day’s duties.

Police said there was no conversation or interaction between Lian and Ramiriz before Ramiriz was shot and killed. “It’s sadly a case of him being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” a police officer said.

Lian, an employee at the Home Depot warehouse near the Wawa, had come to the United States eight years earlier. He had lived in the Lehigh Valley for two years since moving from Washington state.

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin confirmed that Lian had legally purchased the gun he used in the shooting on Jan. 31 and received a concealed carry permit in March.

Writing in Psychology Today, Dr. Ralph Lewis says, “For many people, the idea that randomness rules our lives is counterintuitive, unappealing and frightening; moreover, randomness feels purposeless and meaningless to many.

It is common for us to want to believe that “everything happens for a reason” or that things are “meant to be,” or that something occurred because it was part of “God’s plan.”

That is why in situations such as the Wawa shootings, we are left with this nagging, uneasy feeling that next time we are the ones who might be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.