This is what I heard frequently now that the immediate danger is over in the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. I hear people blaming other people, no one ready to stand up and say “we messed this up”. After police officers arrived at the school, they stayed outside the classroom for almost an hour while children were being murdered.

Everyone says that the responders to a school have been trained, and know exactly what to do. But what happened? Where was the training? As parents began to arrive at the school, and pleaded with the police to break-in and stop this horror, the police refused.

Inside, children were calling emergency services at 911, and begged for people to save them. Children whispering, hiding themselves in dark bathrooms, in other classrooms and other small places where groups of them hid. All the while pleading for the police to come. Essentially, pleading for their lives; 10-year-olds pleading for their lives, while police stood outside the classroom while the killing continued, doing nothing. The police were armed, allegedly trained for this very event, and they did NOTHING.

Some of the children have begun to speak out about their ordeal. The one that touched my heart the most, was the young girl who smeared her dead friend’s blood all over herself so the gunman would think she was also dead and not shoot her. There is no way that does not leave her psychologically damaged. This 11-year-old should be thinking about roller skating, riding her bike, being happy, not about her dead friend’s blood on her body. We know what that young girl said, because it was relayed by a female reporter on CNN. She talked to the woman reporter because the young girl is now too afraid to talk to men. She is too scared to appear on camera, because she is now afraid that if her picture is shown on the television, another gunman will come and find her and kill her, too.

As parents gathered outside the school, they began urging the police to go inside and stop the shooter. As the number of parents outside the school grew, and were trying to get the police to go inside and stop the shooter, the police began to threaten the parents with tasers, to keep them away and to “calm them down.”

The saddest part of the hour that the gunman was in the school with the children alone is that some of their lives could possibly had been saved if the police had gone in and shot him. Some of them could have been saved from bleeding out; pressure and dressings could have been applied to the wounds until the ambulances arrived and paramedics could have taken over treatment.

The one teacher who was murdered had a husband and four children. Her husband has since died of a heart attack. I think that perhaps he could not handle losing his wife. I think prayers should go out for him, as well as his wife, and for their orphaned children, and I hope that there is other family who can take them in, because this is a terrible, awful tragedy for them, also.

Namaste,

Idealisticrebel

Sadly…there has been another mass shooting. There was a young man who, last week, celebrated his 18th birthday by going out and purchasing two automatic rifles, and 375 rounds of ammunition. Everything he did was legal in the state of Texas where he lived. Yesterday, Tuesday, he got up and apparently had an argument with his grandma, with whom he lived. The argument concerned his phone; a typical teenager-in-the-house kind of argument. He was messaging with a 15-year-old girl in Germany, and a 16-year-old girl also in Germany. He messaged the 15-year-old girl saying he was going to kill his grandmother. We have learned that he did, in fact, shoot his grandmother in the face. Miraculously, she was able to dial 911 and asked for help, and also told 911 that he was headed to a nearby elementary school to shoot people there. One can only assume that the attack on his grandmother had to do with the argument about the phone; however, as the grandmother has not regained consciousness since she was taken to the hospital and may not survive, we may never know for sure. Apparently, the grandfather was not home at the time the grandmother was shot.

The boy took the grandmother’s SUV and, without a license, drove towards the elementary school, crashing the car before he arrived. He had both assault rifles with him in the SUV, but only took one — and a bag of ammunition — with him as he walked to the school. When he got to the elementary school he encountered the school “Resource Officer” (a kind of school police officer; sometimes an actual member of the local police department, working either on or off official duty, sometimes a private security guard). They looked at each other. The 18-year-old young man standing there with the automatic rifle and a bag of ammunition, and the armed officer. The officer did not draw his gun, give a warning shot or attempt to apprehend the young man. The young man turned and ran into the school, down two hallways and into a class room on the left side of the hallway.

When he got inside the classroom filled with 10 year-old 4th graders and 2 teachers, he began to shoot. And shoot. And Shoot. 19 of the 10-year-olds were murdered, along with 2 teachers, one of whom through herself in front of some of the children trying to protect them. She died a hero.

40 to 60 minutes later, law enforcement shot the shooter and ended the horrific ordeal.

This is not the end of the story.

This story is much bigger than the horrendous crime committed by the 18-year-old. 19 10-year-olds will not go on vacation with their families this summer, or ever again. They will put no more teeth under their pillows for the Tooth Fairy. They won’t go to that long-awaited baseball game with their dad or mom. They won’t be helping mom make a birthday cake for dad next week. They will never go to Prom. They will never ever graduate from High School. They won’t be taking college entrance exams, and be jumping up and down because they got into the college they wanted. They won’t ever get married, no tux or white satin wedding dress. No next generation. And no growing old together.

Their parents, their families, are never going to completely heal from this horror. To lose a child is hard enough when they are a victim of leukemia or cancer, but to be a victim of an angry kid who dropped out of high school — how do you recover?

How do you walk into your child’s bedroom? How do you touch the bed they will never sleep in again? How do you pick up the clothes they just dropped on the floor? How do you look at their new puppy who sleeps in their room? And tomorrow morning, when their alarm goes off for school, and the sound wakes you — for the first few seconds you don’t know why, but then you remember. How do you cope?

You’re used to yelling upstairs — don’t forget to make your bed. Don’t forget to brush your teeth. Don’t forget to comb your hair. From now on, those familiar little reminders will always remind you that something is missing. Your baby is missing.

The other children in that school room who were not murdered or injured were still touched by this crime. They were looking forward to sitting with their best friend at lunch; hoping their teacher wouldn’t read their assignment too closely. They were going to go to camp next week and that was going to be really fun. They were hoping there wouldn’t be homework that night, just a few days from the end of the school year.

But everything changed. Everything was fine, and sunny and bright and beautiful, and then this strange teenager walked in and he had a gun, and he began to shoot. Everybody was screaming and yelling, and trying to remember the training from the active shooter drills. But mostly, everyone was afraid. More afraid then they’d ever been before in their lives.

All of a sudden, there was blood everywhere, and I saw my friend fall down, and there was blood around her. And I was so scared I threw up. Then other kids were falling down and the gun was so loud, and he shot and shot, and finally he ran out of the room and the police came into the room, and some chased him and I don’t know what happened beyond that. And I’m still scared.

Namaste,

Idealisticrebel

I’m sorry that I haven’t been blogging lately, I’ve been ill and in the hospital, but I am BACK.

While we have some serious things going on in the United States, I definitely want to encourage everyone to keep Ukraine in their thoughts and prayers, and to continue doing whatever you are able to do for the Ukrainian people.

Namaste,

Idealisticrebel