2019-02-14 - Remembering the Vic

Remembering the Victims

It is the Valentine's Day today. Today also marks the one year anniversary of the Stoneman Douglas High School tragic when 17 students and teachers fell victims of gun violent. It was also the same day of the Chinese New Year last year when this happened. It has a special meaning to us since we live just a few miles from the high school where this happened. It was so close to our house that some of our neighbors' kids even walked to their school there.

On the day of the shooting happened, I wasn't home. but my wife was. She went to the drug store to pick up something at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. All of a sudden she saw many police cars zoomed up and down the main streets with their blue lights blinking and sirens loudly on. She knew something bad had happened near us but wondered what was it until she went home and turned on the TV. The news was all over on major TV networks world wide. It turned out that the 19 year old gun man, a former student of the same school, came back to the school and just shot 17 people. And it was so close to home!

Face of a Devil

More amazingly, the gun man hid among the surviving students and went to the same shopping center where my wife was doing some shopping there. The policemen got a tip of where the gun man fleet and were looking for him in that area and finally caught him. The guy even had a Big Mac in the MacDonald in the shopping center.

We were so shocked by this event in our area. Although we often walked or ran past the high school when we were exercising, we didn't take any picture since after the event happened. Nor we posted any thing relative to the high school and the event on to our social networks out of our respect to the victims until now, a year after.

Could this tragedy be avoid? I'm not sure. With the current gun policy of the nation, almost anybody can get access to guns. The shooter had a big collection of guns at his home. Before the tragedy happened, there were clear signals that the guy could go violent. The FBI had received reports from people who knew the person. This area was supposed to be one of the best area to live in Florida. The average household income is more than twice of the state average. It was deemed the safest place to live by some organizations. It took just one bad apple to ruin the whole thing up. Some changes are necessary to prevent this from happening again.