The Las Vegas Shooting brought back a stressful memory…
April 16,2007
Monday April 16, 2007 was Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts, a state holiday. It was also my 49th birthday and my niece Sally’s 24th birthday. Sally was studying Biosystems Engineering at Virginia Tech. When I got the news that over 30 students had been shot I was terrified, fearing the worst. After some anxious phone calls we learned that Sally was okay. I was able to breathe a sigh of relief & hug our babies Viterbo & Violeta, reassured that they would see their cousin Sally again. The rest of the day passed quietly. Kathy persuaded me to go out for a ride with her and the kids. The impact of another senseless act of gun violence hitting so close to home had robbed me of any celebratory impulses. I thanked God Sally was safe and prayed for the families of the kids who weren’t so lucky.
Yes it was a terrible senseless act that traumatized an entire academic community and the friends, families, and neighbors of its students.
I remember the incident, which became one of the brutal tragedies of shooting in US history where one of the victims was a doctoral student from Indonesia at the Faculty of Civil Engineering.