1 thing to know re: Georgia school shooting
A warning from Oxford High to Apalachee High
It’s hard to remember the names of the schools or the cities anymore.
But there is one thing I can’t forget, something I learned following the murders at Oxford High School in Michigan nearly three years ago.
The small town reeled, just like towns do after their children die in the classroom.
But what haunts me are not just the stories of the four dead, including an execution style-killing, which are horrific, or the seven injured, who face ongoing medical treatment. Stories of children trading their lives to save another still make me physically ill.
While police step carefully on bloodstained floors, around lifeless bodies, children who witness the carnage go home quietly. Their flesh isn’t torn. They appear unharmed. Mothers hug them, grateful to not be making burial plans.
To this day, I can’t stop thinking of the little boy in the closet.
He wasn’t shot at Oxford High on Nov. 30, 2021.
But things changed for him that day. The boy moved from sleeping in his bed to sleeping in his closet. He asked his mother and father to sleep outside his closet, on the floor, and keep him safe.
They agreed to do as he asked.
This morning, a parent in Oxford told me that news of Apalachee High School on Sept. 4, 2024 triggered sobbing. The statistics are similar, with four dead and nine injured. The alleged shooter is 14 — a year younger than the Oxford gunman.
“You see all the parents lined up, looking for their kids. There is nothing you can do. Your world is changed. Everything is falling apart,” said the Oxford parent, whose name is being withheld because the last thing anyone wants is to be in the spotlight again. “This never goes away. You’re never OK. This is forever.”
This is not just Oxford, Michigan or Winder, Georgia.
This is America.
Note: Phoebe Wall Howard covered pieces of the Oxford school shooting as a team reporter at The Detroit Free Press. The toll the case took on the families, the first responders, the press is immeasurable. Many involved requested mental health care after the school shooting.
Great article. The spineless GOP IN BOTH HOUSE AND SENATE need to be required to attend the funeral of all mass shooting victims especially the young children . I am still sickened by the cowardly law enforcement in Uvalde Texas. Check out Daniel Defense a manufacturer of AR type weapons in Georgia.
Two mass shootings: Georgia school and Ky highway. Moderators did not ask questions. Neither candidate commented. I do remember Harris stating she and husband owned guns. I, too, briefly carried a sidearm in Chicago for work. I grew up on the Southside-I do not recall mass shootings in my public school. There were murders and shootings. AR-15s and other automatic weapons were not prevalent