Kyle Velasquez, age sixteen, died from gunshot wounds to the head and back. Patrick Ireland, age seventeen, was shot in the head and foot. Daniel Steepleton, age seventeen, was shot once in the thigh. Makai Hall, age eighteen, was shot in the knee. Steven Curnow, age fourteen, was slain by a shot to the neck. Kacey Ruegsegger, age seventeen, was wounded in the shoulder, hand, and neck. Cassie Bernall, age seventeen, had her life ended by a shotgun wound to the head. Isaiah Shoels, age eighteen, was killed by a shot to the chest. Matthew Kechter, age sixteen, was also murdered with a single shot to the chest. Lisa Kreutz, age eighteen, was wounded in the shoulder, hand, arms, and thigh. Valeen Schnurr, age eighteen, took bullets in the chest, arms, and abdomen. Mark Kintgen, age seventeen, was wounded in the head and shoulder. Lauren Townsend, age eighteen, was murdered with gunshot wounds to the head, chest, and lower body. Nicole Knowlen, age sixteen, was hit in the abdomen. John Tomlin, age sixteen, died with shots to the head and neck. Kelly Fleming, age sixteen, was hit with a shotgun blast to the back and died. Jeanna Park, age eighteen, was hit in the knee, shoulder, and foot. Daniel Mauser, age fifteen, had his life ended with single shot to the face. Jennifer Doyle, age seventeen, was hit in the hand, leg, and shoulder. Austin Eubanks, age seventeen, was wounded in the hand and knee. Corey DePooter, age seventeen, was murdered with gunshots to the chest and neck.
Less than an hour later, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold committed suicide using one of the shotguns and the TEC-9 The police did not enter until after the shooters were dead. Police tactics would forever change after Columbine, however. Instead of waiting to enter, police in active-shooter situations would go in and pursue the shooters. Charlton Heston would lead an NRA convention a week later in Colorado and would famously hold a musket over his head, proclaiming, “From my cold dead hands.”14
Victims’ parents would be among the demonstrators protesting the NRA outside the convention and calling for gun control. The only change to come out of the Columbine shooting, though, was Kmart banning the sale of handgun ammunition in its stores, and this only happened after Michael Moore took two Columbine survivors to the Kmart headquarters and filmed the encounter for his movie Bowling for Columbine. Moore also visited Heston and confronted his support of the NRA in the wake of Columbine. The old actor stopped the interview and shuffled off, while Moore trailed him with a picture of a girl shot by a six-year-old who had found his stepfather's gun and brought it to school.
Metal detectors and lockdown procedures for high schools across the country would be implemented after Columbine. Lockdown drills would become part of everyday school life in America. There would be copycat murders and plots that echoed Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris's rampage.15 The rock singer Marilyn Mansion would be blamed for influencing the two students, along with Goth culture and video games.16 The seminal book on the shootings, Columbine, by Dave Cullen, would come out ten years later. The bullying of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold would be cited and some would say that such a thing was bound to happen when students are ostracized.17
Harris and Klebold would be studied intensely, with psychiatrists labeling them as psychopaths in waiting without a lot of the classic symptoms of full-blown psychopaths.18 That seemed the only diagnosis that might explain why two normal American young men would plan and carry out such cold-blooded murders. Basically, psychopaths have no empathy at all, no normal human response to the suffering of others. They have iced-over emotions that don't spark, and so one theory has it that they are forever looking for what will stimulate them.19 Any thrill ride, any adrenaline ride that might allow them to feel something could be seen as acceptable, including killing multiple people. Because of their failure to feel anything, psychopaths don't tend to examine their motives or their actions, instead seeing themselves as superior. To the psychopath, other human beings are an oddity, and they might well ask why people feel anything? Meeting a plea for help with a shotgun blast is a perfectly normal response for a psychopath.
But of course all these psychological explanations fall apart when reliving the carnage that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold inflicted on that day. All theories about why two young men would murder their fellow students would be discounted and there would be the implementation of security cameras and the turning of schools into locked-down institutions. Does it matter that Eric was on Zoloft and in therapy and so was Dylan? Does it matter that Dylan made a copy of Heinrich Himmler's famous speech to Nazi SS leaders in which he justified the slaughter of human beings.20 The video tapes from the security cameras show two lanky young men strolling around the lunchroom with their weapons. On the six-month anniversary of the shooting, 450 kids would call in sick at Columbine because they were afraid it might happen again. A friend of Dylan and Eric's had said he was going to finish the job; he was arrested and held on $500,000 bond.21
Twenty years later, my kids would be buzzed into their kindergartens, elementary schools, and high schools and would go through drills for active shooters. The high school and elementary school principals would stand guard. There would be several real lockdowns implemented when suspicious characters entered the school. The Trench Coat Mafia would live on through the internet. Dress codes would be recommended that would prevent students from concealing weapons in bulky shirts or pants.22 Columbine High School would require a 1.2 million dollar remodeling.23 Murder in high schools by heavily armed intruders would become a cultural part of American life after Columbine. The shooting in Colorado would stand as the worst school shooting in American history—until the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre. Colorado would close the gun-show loophole that allowed people to purchase guns without a background check.24 No significant national gun-control legislation would be passed in Congress because of the Columbine school shooting.25
The sad legacy of Columbine lives on to this day. On May 18, 2018, Dimitrios Pagourtzis walked into Santa Fe High School in a small Texas city with a sawed-off shotgun concealed under his trench coat and murdered ten people and wounded thirteen others. It was a violation of the school dress code that had forbade trench coats ever since Columbine.26
Getting out of the airport consumes us. Leaving means safety. Leaving means getting away from the possibility of a shooter taking a random shot. As long as we are in the airport there is a possibility of danger. The news trucks have not budged. The newspeople still look amazingly fresh and beautiful. There is a story lurking out there somewhere and no one wants to miss it. We have seen the buses coming to take everyone out and then there are rumors that we have to get to a disembarkation point to catch the buses.
A SWAT team officer points down the road. “You have to get down to the end of the airport to catch the buses,” he says, holding his submachine gun with one hand and pointing with the other. I look at our luggage. We have seven bags and five people. I will carry two and Clay can carry two. I turn to Kitty.
“What do you think?”
We hear the rumble of diesel engines as the buses started to roll by. They come one after another and show no signs of slowing down. It is the first glimmer of hope that we might get out of the airport. Kitty's clothes are black with grime and her hair is stringy and frizzed from the humidity. We all look like we have been through a war.
“I say let's go,” she says, watching the buses.
“You have to walk down on that side to catch the buses,” the SWAT officer continues, pointing to a narrow walkway on the far side of the street.
“Thank you,” I shout, getting everyone situated with a suitcase. For some reason, I have this vision of Dr. Zhivago, the David Lean film, in which Zhivago and his wife and child are forced to leave Moscow to get away from the Bolsheviks who are coming to arrest him. We are refugees and we join a long line of people walking on the narrow walkway as buses hurtle past. The oppressive heat comes back and I realize we have had hardly any water and no food for over seven hours. Dehydration is a real issue.
“Everyone stay to the inside of the sidewalk,” I yell back, watching the dangerously c
lose buses. It is even hotter and the air is stiller, if that was possible. We have the grim determination of people who just want to reach a place where a shower and a bed will be a reality. So we begin our trek. Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport is very large and I have no idea where we are supposed to end up to catch the buses. But for the first time we are going somewhere with a purpose instead of waiting and hiding from unseen shooters. The police cars and ambulances roll past and I wonder about the people shot in Terminal 2. Are they still there? Police procedure doesn't allow expired victims to be moved until all evidence is gathered. This could go up to twenty-four hours if lots of victims are involved. The stories of loved ones not getting the news about their relatives for many hours is legend.
But we are leaving. All we have to do is reach a destination point and the buses will take us out of the airport and this part of the nightmare will end. Our refugee line snakes all the way back to Terminal 1. We are all following each other blindly. We covet the return to normal life. We have not become victims. By the twists of fate no bullet has found my family. We have acted out of self-preservation and whoever was behind the shots in Terminal 1 has not made himself known to us. Esteban Santiago had not checked his baggage through to Terminal 1. But he could have. He could have taken a United Flight and picked up his bags and Clay could have been down there looking for food or I could have been looking for Clay, and once you cross paths with the terminal velocity of a killer then you have rolled the dice, you have rolled badly, and your odds skyrocket. You are no longer one in eleven thousand. You are no longer even one in three hundred. You are now one in ten or however many people are in the area. You have become that terribly unlucky person people see on the news and you might become a gruesome statistic, never knowing what hit you.
Middle-class people going through their lives never see the lightning strike. They never feel the heart attack or the train that was supposed to not be there or the freak steel beam that falls from a building. Many people in the World Trade Center died thinking it was just another day. Their cars were parked in the commuter lots and left by the trains. They didn't know they would die and they suddenly become one with the person who falls in a retention pond on a golf course or the man who is electrocuted by urinating on the third rail of an elevated train with the high voltage following the stream back.
When it happens you are the conduit for the pernicious current that runs through the universe and you are the man lighting the stove, not putting on his seatbelt, not seeing the baseball at the game that hits him in the temple. Odds mean nothing when you break them. Your odds have broken down. You did get struck by lightning. You did get the incurable disease. You were in the baggage claim area of the airport when the shooter opened up. You did get shot. You are dead. Once you find yourself near a shooter you play the odds with those around you. Some will die. You just don't want it to be you or your family. You are the soldier with the kill or be killed attitude. It will be either him or me, and it's not going to be me. You wish others well but you have to survive and others around you are bent on the same thing. Darwinism kicks in in its rawest form. Though there are others who push back against this like the man who threw himself over the young mother and whispered, “I will protect you,” when Santiago began shooting.1 He was a hero and those people give humans a God-like dimension. But most of us just want to live and will do anything to stay in the light.
People's lives will be altered by Esteban Santiago and by the second shooter, whose shots many believed they heard. You cannot control what is happening but you can control the outcome. You want the victim to be anyone but you. That is your thought when you run from the bullets: anyone but you because the statistics no longer matter. You have crossed the Rubicon and you are dangerously close to that statistic and you think your life will be changed forever even as you go through it.
I look over and there is that gutted white 757 behind a high, razor-tipped fence. The white soot-stained fuselage faintly glows in the night and it is a testament to all the things that can go wrong. Here is this multimillion-dollar piece of state-of-the-art technology and now it is a fire-blackened carcass parked behind an airplane hangar. It's just another piece of junk that didn't work out. Millions of hours of human design, engineering, effort, history, going all the way back to the Wright brothers went into that plane and yet it caught fire and burned and became an inert collection of steel and technology that just didn't work out. We are flawed and so are our extensions. We may be humane beings, but we have a terrible murderous side that shows itself in the one-in-a-million events that leave our most thought-out elevated designs junked on the side of the road. The randomness of the universe has its due.
I am thinking about all of this as another armed SWAT officer in full camouflage approaches with an arm up. There is an army of SWAT men and they are blocking the forward motion of our refugee caravan. “You can't go this way; you have to go back,” he says, pointing from where we had come. I come to a stop and wipe my brow and stare at him.
“But we were told the buses are loading up there,” I protest, pointing down the road.
He shakes his head with his hand firmly on his rifle. I am wondering when I will stop talking to men with enough firepower to go fight in Afghanistan. He shakes his head again. “I don't know anything about that,” he says. “You have to go back the way you came.”
I look at Kitty and my daughters. Everyone is hot, tired, dehydrated. We have no water and nowhere to get any. I worry about Callie but for now she seems to be doing alright. I look at Kitty.
“We have to go back.”
Already people are turning around. Kitty is much more practical than I am. She has already turned around while I foolishly think I can change the armed man's mind.
“Let's go,” she says, leading the kids.
Now I am in the back of our wagon train as we head back to Terminal 2. It does not feel good to think about this. Terminal 2 and Terminal 1 are forever linked with danger, if not death. And they are the last place we want to be but we are headed straight back into the abyss. I start thinking about Casablanca again and the struggle of Rick to help Victor Laszlo, and Ilsa escape before the Nazis get them. They are trying to get to America where they will be safe. Of course we are already in America and even presidents aren't safe. It would take a president getting shot to get a piece of gun-control legislation passed.
John Hinckley was obsessed with Jodie Foster. He followed her everywhere and had seen the movie Taxi Driver fifteen times. He saw himself as the taxi driver from the movie, played by Robert De Niro—the building volcano who would one day blow sensationally. Travis Bickle, the character, would try to protect the twelve-year-old prostitute played by Jodie Foster and then try to assassinate a US senator who was running for president.
Hinckley wanted to impress Jodie Foster. He enrolled in a writing course at Yale University to be near her, and he followed her around for years. He wrote her letters and called her but she was not interested. Finally, Hinckley decided that if he achieved fame equal to Foster's she would be attracted to him. He began to follow President Jimmy Carter around, wanting to follow in Travis Bickle's footsteps. He was arrested for firearms possession at the Nashville airport where Carter was supposed to stop. The Secret Service and FBI both missed the red flags, though, and Hinckley was released. A new president was elected, giving Hinckley a new target. He quit going to the psychiatrist his parents had found to help their troubled son, and started trailing President Ronald Reagan.1
On March 29, 1981, Hinckley took a bus to Washington and checked into the Park Central Hotel. The next day he wrote a final letter to Foster thinking that this would be the end and that he would die in the assassination attempt. He told her that he would give up his idea of shooting Reagan if she would have him.2 He didn't mail the letter, though, and instead left for the Washington Hilton Hotel where Reagan was giving a speech. The hotel was considered safe, as it had an enclosed passageway for the president to use a
nd there was only about thirty feet from the entrance of the hotel to the limousine, so Reagan didn't wear his bulletproof vest.3
John Hinckley waited in a crowd outside the hotel, behind a rope line. The people were thought to have been screened but it was found later that they had not.4 In his mind, this would be his moment to impress Foster and live in infamy, just like Travis Bickle. The president emerged at 2:27 p.m. and walked toward his limousine, passing right in front of him. Hinckley raised his Rohm RG 14.22 revolver and fired six times in 1.7 seconds, missing the president with all except for his last shot, which ricocheted and caught Reagan in the left side of his rib cage. White House press secretary James Brady was hit in the forehead with the first of the exploding bullets. The next bullet struck police officer Thomas Delahanty and punctured the back of his neck as he tried to protect Reagan. Hinckley shot past Reagan with his third shot and smashed a window across the street. Special Agent Jerry Parr had shoved Reagan into the limousine by this point, and Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy stepped into the line of fire to protect the president. McCarthy was struck in the abdomen with the fourth bullet. The fifth bullet lodged in the bulletproof glass of the armored limousine's open door. The sixth bullet glanced off the armored car and struck the president under his left arm, glancing off a rib and stopping in his lung, only one inch from his heart.5
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