Thursday, September 28, 2006
Ghosts of April 1999 return.....
Aerial views of long lines of children, their hands on their heads, filing toward waiting yellow buses. Frantic parents, their faces tear stained, mill around with cell phones tight against their ears, waiting. Tense but nearly silent SWAT team members take their positions to secure the perimeter of a building that looks all too familiar, a high school. And all I can think is, "Oh, God, not again!"
After I got home from aquacise this afternoon, instead of my usual nap or computer session, I for some reason decided to switch on the tv. The station I was tuned to was airing "Extra", but I wasn't paying much attention because I was brushing Chip. At least I wasn't paying attention until the "Breaking News" logo came on the screen and they cut away to the local newscaster. Since 1999, I've always caught my breath when this happens because there have been so many tragedies reported this way. This was no exception.
Around 11:30am, near a small mountain town in a county just to the west of the one where the Columbine shootings happened, a man is seen inside the school. He is mistaken for a student because he's wearing school colors including a hoodie and a back pack. He goes into a classroom and pulls out a gun and fires a warning shot. He personally calls 911 and tells them he has a bomb in the back pack. He takes six girls hostage.
The evacuation begins immediately, first the high school and then the middle school that is connected to it. This procedure is quite familiar to the kids as they've done several drills. After all, they are a fairly short distance from Littleton, Colorado, and everyone knows what happened there. The kids are taken by bus to a safe location, pretty much without incident.
The shooter engages in negotation with the authorities for over three hours. He releases five of the girls, but then stops talking to the negotiator. The SWAT team converges on the school, but the gunman is using the last hostage as a shield! He shoots at the police, then before anyone can act, he shoots the student and himself. The girl, who is only 16, is flown to Denver, but she cannot be saved. She dies an hour after she was shot.
As of the 10pm news, the shooter's body is still in the school while the authorities thoroughly comb the area for possible explosives. No one seems to know who the man was. The student who was murdered, however, was well known because the school only had 450 students and everyone knows everyone else in the neighboring town. Her identity is not being released yet because of the uproar it will cause.
This is not what Bailey, Colorado wants to be known for. It's a quiet mountain town where the biggest threat is generally a bear or a lion, not a lunatic with a gun. My cousin lives near there, although I think his kids are home schooled.
I thought I was past the point of being haunted by the images of machine guns pointed at a school building, past the nausea that accompanies the knowledge that a community considered safe is actually so vulnerable, past having my heart broken even though I have no children. I thought, especially after 9/11, that I was too jaded to have any innocence left to be assaulted.
I was wrong.
After I got home from aquacise this afternoon, instead of my usual nap or computer session, I for some reason decided to switch on the tv. The station I was tuned to was airing "Extra", but I wasn't paying much attention because I was brushing Chip. At least I wasn't paying attention until the "Breaking News" logo came on the screen and they cut away to the local newscaster. Since 1999, I've always caught my breath when this happens because there have been so many tragedies reported this way. This was no exception.
Around 11:30am, near a small mountain town in a county just to the west of the one where the Columbine shootings happened, a man is seen inside the school. He is mistaken for a student because he's wearing school colors including a hoodie and a back pack. He goes into a classroom and pulls out a gun and fires a warning shot. He personally calls 911 and tells them he has a bomb in the back pack. He takes six girls hostage.
The evacuation begins immediately, first the high school and then the middle school that is connected to it. This procedure is quite familiar to the kids as they've done several drills. After all, they are a fairly short distance from Littleton, Colorado, and everyone knows what happened there. The kids are taken by bus to a safe location, pretty much without incident.
The shooter engages in negotation with the authorities for over three hours. He releases five of the girls, but then stops talking to the negotiator. The SWAT team converges on the school, but the gunman is using the last hostage as a shield! He shoots at the police, then before anyone can act, he shoots the student and himself. The girl, who is only 16, is flown to Denver, but she cannot be saved. She dies an hour after she was shot.
As of the 10pm news, the shooter's body is still in the school while the authorities thoroughly comb the area for possible explosives. No one seems to know who the man was. The student who was murdered, however, was well known because the school only had 450 students and everyone knows everyone else in the neighboring town. Her identity is not being released yet because of the uproar it will cause.
This is not what Bailey, Colorado wants to be known for. It's a quiet mountain town where the biggest threat is generally a bear or a lion, not a lunatic with a gun. My cousin lives near there, although I think his kids are home schooled.
I thought I was past the point of being haunted by the images of machine guns pointed at a school building, past the nausea that accompanies the knowledge that a community considered safe is actually so vulnerable, past having my heart broken even though I have no children. I thought, especially after 9/11, that I was too jaded to have any innocence left to be assaulted.
I was wrong.
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