"I've Covered Seven Mass Shootings. These Are the Memories That Haunt Me."

[Nevilledog]

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Ken Armstrong
@bykenarmstrong
Columbine. Platte Canyon High School. Virginia Tech. Deer Creek Middle School. Aurora movie theater. Arapahoe High School. Santa Fe High School.

@jenny_deam covered them all, seeing the promise of "never again" devolve into an "American myth."
@propublica

propublica.org
I’ve Covered Seven Mass Shootings. These Are the Memories That Haunt Me.
Columbine High School. Platte Canyon High School. Virginia Tech. Deer Creek Middle School. Aurora movie theater. Arapahoe High School. Santa Fe High School. ProPublica reporter Jenny Deam reflects on...
2:55 PM · May 31, 2022

https://www.propublica.org/article/shooting-news-msm-reporter-essay

When a Texas law enforcement official last week laid out how police waited in the halls of Robb Elementary School while children trapped with the gunman pleaded for help, my mind went back to 23 years ago.

April 20, 1999. I remember it all too clearly. Two teenagers methodically murdered 12 classmates and a teacher inside Columbine High School in Colorado, and even though police swarmed to the scene quickly, they stayed outside, waiting. Those within hung a sign in a window to alert officers below: “1 bleeding to death.” The SWAT team ignored it. When officers finally searched the building, they found the body of Dave Sanders, a teacher shot hours before.

Patrick Ireland also was waiting for help as he dragged himself 50 feet across broken glass in the school library after being shot three times, including twice in the head. The then-17-year-old propelled himself out a second-story window, captured on live television by news crews in helicopters. He became known as the “boy in the window.”

Law enforcement response to mass shootings was supposedly overhauled after Columbine to no longer wait before storming a building. Society, too, supposedly turned introspective, drawing a line of demarcation. Lots of talk of never again. Back then it was my solace — as a reporter, a mother, a human. The image of terrified children with their arms raised was surely part of never again.

*snip*