In a single day, in two separate cases, two Skopje residents reported that a bullet had damaged their windscreen. Not a shooting, not a settling of scores, not an incident with a known perpetrator - simply a round falling out of the sky onto a parked vehicle.

The first case was reported on 12 August at 10:55. S.R., 53, reported that in the Čair area a stray round from a firearm had damaged the windscreen of an „Opel” goods vehicle with Skopje plates. The second came the same evening at 22:45 - G.T., 44, reported that in Vizbegovo a stray round had damaged the windscreen of a „Ford” passenger car.

The Interior Ministry says measures are being taken to clear up the cases. The wording is familiar. It is the same sentence we read every time somebody fires into the air for a wedding, a birthday, a goal, or no reason at all, and the round comes back to where physics says it must - down.

Both cases ended in broken glass. The distance between a damaged windscreen and a funeral procession is a few metres and a bit of luck. The bullet that came down in Čair at 10:55 in the morning had no guarantee whatsoever that what lay beneath it would be a car and not a person.

What is missing from the police bulletin is the number. How many reports like this there have been this year, how many ended with a perpetrator found, how many firearms were confiscated as a result. Without that data every case looks like an isolated incident rather than what every Skopje resident knows it to be - a regular occurrence with a predictable calendar.