I heard about it through a phone call.
My daughter, who attends the University of Washington, received a phone call from her friend’s mother, and she then called me to check on her sister. She was reassured when I told her that her sister was not at school today.
That was when I turned on the television and watched the breaking news stories. There had been a shooting and Roosevelt High School was in lockdown. The shooting had not happened at the school, but in easy walking distance to it.
I still cannot believe it. Two people killed and three others critically wounded. Just down the street from my daughter’s school. A little over a mile from my house.
I don’t think everything is over yet, since I can still hear the helicopters overhead.
My heart goes out to the victims and the victim’s families. It is surreal that something so tragic could happen right in my very own, usually peaceful neighborhood. I am unable to understand how a person could be so messed up that he could do something like this.
What really scares me about the whole ordeal, though, is that it happened right at lunch time. My daughter’s school has an open campus policy that allows students to visit neighboring stores and restaurants during lunch. There is such a flood of students in that area during lunch time that I purposely avoid doing any shopping during those hours. The lines are just too long.
So when I heard that the shooting happened near lunch I immediately became concerned. What about all those students who had been getting lunch. Would they be locked out?
Fortunately, one news reporter explained that as soon as the police arrived they made sure all the students were “swept” back to the school. I’m not 100% sure what that means, but I was glad to hear that there was a procedure in place to handle off campus students during a lockdown.
Then, as if this shooting wasn’t bad enough, there was another shooting downtown, just a few minutes later. A woman was killed.
Which really makes me wonder, since we are only six miles from downtown.
The descriptions of the suspects don’t match very well. But could there be such a coincidence?
UPDATE:
It wasn’t a coincidence. The suspect in the Roosevelt shooting and the downtown shooting were the same man.
When he thought he was about to be caught he shot himself. So he killed 4 people and critically wounded 2 more, and for what?
Today has been a very sad day.