Imagine this conversation at the home of an Amarillo police officer.

“How did your day go?”

“Oh, we got a call this morning. We scrambled some units to a Walmart. We found a guy inside with a hostage. So we shot him. He’s dead.”

Sure, the questioner probably didn’t need to ask. But the event that occurred this morning at the Canyon Expressway and Georgia Street illustrates the tenuous nature of police work.

It ended with the death of a disgruntled Walmart employee who apparently had a beef with a store manager.

Police have identified the hostage-taker as Mohammed Moghaddam, a Somali immigrant. They secured the area immediately after the incident concluded. Traffic returned quickly to normal around the area.

What happened, though, is extraordinary in this important respect: It came only two days after the nation was stunned to hear about the massacre at the Orlando, Fla., nightclub where 49 people were gunned down before police killed the shooter.

Americans from coast to coast were put on edge as the news out of central Florida began to sink in and as we all begin to process what happened.

There’s some relief — if that’s the correct word — in the knowledge that what happened at the Walmart was the result of a readily identifiable motive. It doesn’t lessen the anxiety that the police suffered as they sought to end this crisis. Nor does it make light of the grief being felt by the family of the man who was shot to death.

I do, though, rest more easily this afternoon in the knowledge that our community has averted something far more terrible.

I thank the professionalism shown by our law enforcement agencies responding to an imminently dangerous event.