The sixteenth of March in 2004 dawned crisp and clear in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. The chill and rain of the previous weeks had blown away, and the muddy gaps in the sidewalks were finally drying up. A few clouds skirted the blue sky as the day warmed over Kosovo, a diamond-shaped patch of land in the southwestern Balkans slightly smaller than Connecticut.

By 10 a.m., stories were already spreading about a tragedy that occurred the previous evening in Mitrovica, the tense city in Kosovo's north where Kosovo Serbs and Kosovar Albanians lived in fear of each other on opposite sides of the Ibar River. According to newspapers, radio, and gossip, four Albanian youngsters had been playing on the northern, Serb side of the river when several older Serbian youths gave chase and set a dog on them. The Albanian youngsters, terrified, tried to flee into or across the river, and three of the four drowned. Alienated from international authorities, most Kosovar Albanians throughout the rest of Kosovo did not expect the United Nations (UN) police to do anything about the tragedy, let alone arrest and punish the perpetrators. The Kosovar Albanian media fed the frenzy. They eagerly passed on information that later turned out to be wildly inaccurate, with little concern about the impact on the public mood.

Expectations were high that something significant was going to happen that day.