No coronavirus news today. While today has not been as bad for the community as August 12, 2017 was, it hasn't been a good one. We think it can't happen here until it does. Late last night, a bus returned to The Local University from a class trip to a play in Washington, DC. As the bus was unloading, one of the students pulled out a gun and started shooting. Three young men were killed; two were injured. One of the injured students is in critical condition. It seems that all five of the victims were on or had connections to the university's football team, as did the shooter, also a student. The shooter was not apprehended until about noon today. Classes were cancelled (for tomorrow as well), and students were told to shelter in place. That order was lifted after local and state police had thoroughly searched the university.
Motive? It's not clear. There was a suggestion on a sub-Reddit that the shooter had been hazed by some of the students he shot, that the hazing involved the football team. We may never know for sure unless the young man in custody, charged with three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, tells us.
Even though I was nowhere near the university and the news came early enough that The Professor stayed home, that it happened here is unnerving and upsetting. I cannot imagine what the parents of the victims, dead or injured, are feeling. They trusted the university, city, state, other entity, to take care of their children, and that trust has been violated. I feel also for the parents of the shooter. They, too, have lost a child, though in a much different way.
COVID sucks, but this sucks more.
No comments:
Post a Comment