The city where Columbine took place was in my home state but wasn't really within my community, per se. I'd never been to the area where it happened, or heard of the school until the day it became infamous. The shooting in Aurora however was almost quite literally in my own backyard. Aurora is a suburb of Denver and my aunt and uncle lived there for most of my childhood. Occasionally my siblings and I would spend a weekend with them and go bumming around the area, go shopping and go to the movies. I have been to the Century 16 theater at least half a dozen times and I'm sure the same goes for the hundreds of moviegoers who were there on July 20 for that midnight screening. Much like Columbine, everyone arrived expecting the night to be like any other, but for 12 people it was their last night. The youngest victim was just 6 and the oldest was 51, but the majority of the dead were in their 20's. I don't think the impact of exactly what happened in these situations hits home for a lot of people until they get the facts. Once names and ages and life stories begin to trickle out you realize that all of those ambitions and hopes and dreams are gone, and for no reason at all.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting I was struck by the story of one victim in particular, Jessica Ghawi. She was the only confirmed fatality at that point and the reason for that was the friend she went to the movie with was wounded but had the presence of mind to call her family and tell them he believed she was dead. (FYI, for almost 24 hours on Friday, the loved ones of most of the 11 other victims could not get confirmation that they were gone. I understand they needed to go over an extensive crime scene and all but there has to be a better way to handle notifying the next of kin in these situations. Knowing but not knowing your loved one is dead has to be torturous.)I can't imagine what it must have taken for her brother to make the media rounds hours after his sisters' death urging people to remember the victims and not their murderer. I don't think I'd be able to move if anything ever happened to any of my family or friends, let alone talk about them in detail during an interview. That dude is much tougher than I'll ever be. A month ago, his sister was in Toronto visiting her boyfriend and ventured to the mall to eat and shop. According to her blog, an odd feeling came over her and she decided to walk out of the mall. Three minutes later a man opened fire in the very food court she had been eating in, killing two people and injuring three others. In what would turn out to be her final blog entry she detailed what she saw and heard and the feeling that led her to leave when she did and most likely saved her life. It's eerie to read now that she's no longer with us. It's unbelievable and so tragic that she found herself in a different country a month later and died in a similar rampage to the one she'd witnessed in Toronto. Seriously, what are the odds of that? I've often wondered if there is some sort of 'Final Destination'-esque situation at play in life and this story only makes me wonder even more. In the past, I've thought about it in relation to myself because I survived something I probably shouldn't have and since then I have questioned how much more time I may actually have on this earth. Of course, none of us will ever know for sure if some entity is actually controlling when we live or die, or whether death actually follows you and makes good on its, 'sorry I missed you, I'll call again' promissory notes. And that's for the best. But I can't get over how lucky this girl was one month and how terribly unlucky she was Friday.
So what happens now, we all wonder. Do we start to see metal detectors pop up at movie theaters the way they did in high schools post-Columbine? Will emergency exits, meant to help people reach safety but used last week as a means to bring in weapons and end lives, be monitored in some way to make sure no one can re-enter once they leave? Obviously the gun control debate will heat up, already idiots on one side are saying someone with a gun could've prevented injuries and deaths and possibly killed the gunman. However logical thinking people realize that if someone else had a gun in that theater, the death toll could've been much worse. You fumble for your gun in a dark, loud, chaotic theater and you start firing in the general direction of where you believe the shooter to be and inadvertently shoot innocent people. Or, even worse, several people have guns and all fumble the same way and it become a shoot out reminiscent of the Old West. I've always believed that people kill people and not guns, but guns sure do make it a lot easier for people to kill each other. You never hear about anyone going on a rampage with a knife and killing dozens of people. And there is absolutely no reason someone needs to own a gun that fires multiple rounds at once like one of those used in this shooting. The entire attack lasted roughly seven minutes and in that time 71 people were injured or killed. Seventy-one people in seven minutes. If there were tougher gun laws it's quite possible he has weapons he needs to stop and reload often, giving his would-be victims time to get out of the theater and find safety.
The number of people affected by this is far greater than seventy-one. Those seventy-one people have families and friends and people who loved them whose lives are also forever altered. There are first responders and doctors and nurses and investigators who will be affected by what they saw. Many of those who were in the theater that night are young and will likely have to cope with PTSD, which is a bitch and affects every aspect of your life. Others are affected in minor ways, like people who will stay away from malls or movie theaters for awhile. Hell, even I've already stated that my daughter will never see the inside of a movie theater again, and I've totally scrapped plans to see "The Dark Knight Rises" in a theater. Not because I think there will be a similar attack but because I know I won't be able to watch it without constantly thinking of what happened. People go to the movies because it provides escapism and, at the moment, it no longer does that for many of us. I also can't help but think of the movie's director and cast (I am a Film major after all), but not because I feel sorry for them. They'll make their millions and be just fine but I've directed before and I can't imagine having your vision taken to such a sick extreme in real life. To conceive something and create it and achieve your dream and then have it forever be linked to something so terrible. He didn't do anything wrong obviously, he just brought his vision to life, but it'll always be in his head that these people lost their lives because they wanted to be among the first to see his movie.
The next year will no doubt be filled with lawsuits (one ridiculous one is already in the works apparently) and legal motions and a psych evaluation for the killer. Everyone already has an opinion on motive and his state of mind at the time, but I highly doubt we'll ever get a why from him. My mom thinks he's schizophrenic, which does make some sense because he's right in the age group for that to begin setting in. He's also incredibly smart and those people seem prone to schizophrenia. But let us not forget he was working towards a PhD in Neuroscience so he has studied and lectured on the brain. If anyone can fake an insanity defense, it would be someone who knows exactly what doctors would be looking for. I'm not sure what to make of him yet, but I think the deliberate planning over several months would make it difficult to use an insanity defense (unless he's actually declared mentally ill by doctors and even then I'd have to question if it was an act). Regardless of the defense, we know he'll spend the rest of his life in prison. Hopefully people will remember the victims rather than the man who turned his anger and stockpile of weapons on them. The killers always seem to be recalled by name when there is an attack of this magnitude and the victims just fall away. His picture and name will be plastered all over the news every time he has a hearing or there's more information about what happened released, yet we'll likely only see the victims photos for the next few weeks as they're laid to rest and then not again until his trial. And the whole thing is just sickening.
I'm fascinated by how sometimes the most mundane of things can be the last things you ever do in life. July 20, 2012 should've been like any other day with the exception that people around the world were watching the most anticipated movie of the year at midnight screenings. The people at the Century 16 should've watched the movie and walked out a few hours later, texting friends and family about how much they liked or didn't like what they'd just seen on the screen. They shouldn't have left in the back of white vans transporting them to the coroner's office. No one ever thinks twice about going to a movie or a restaurant or a mall, we just do it. But sometimes the smallest decisions we make can turn out to be the most fateful. If we're lucky, we get to live and are given a second chance to make decisions. If we turn out to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, there are no second chances. It gives me chills to think about how just the decisions those people made about where to sit in the theater may have saved or cost them their lives. Taking it back even farther, many had purchased their tickets months in advance and it was purely luck of the draw as to which movie theater they ended up in. They spent months waiting in anticipation of July 20th while someone they didn't even know spent those same months acquiring the weapons and ammunition he would use to kill them.
Taken from Jessica Ghawi's blog about the Toronto shooting:
"I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday. I saw the terror on bystanders’ faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath. For one man, it was in the middle of a busy food court on a Saturday evening.
I say all the time that every moment we have to live our life is a blessing. So often I have found myself taking it for granted. Every hug from a family member. Every laugh we share with friends. Even the times of solitude are all blessings. Every second of every day is a gift. After Saturday evening, I know I truly understand how blessed I am for each second I am given."
