The surreal reality of witnessing a shooting first-hand. Something you never forget

[zulchzulu]

In the wake of today's horrific shooting, I had some flashbacks to a shooting that I witnessed while living in San Francisco in 1999.

It is something you never get over. And it's something you hope no one ever has to go through.

Here's what happened.

I was done work and took the Sacramento 19 bus that went through Chinatown and toward where I lived in Pac Heights. Like most days, it was packed with people. I made it to the back of the bus and stood holding the rail since all the seats were taken. The bus proceeded toward Chinatown and stopped at Grant Street. There is a school playground near that corner. We were in the heart of Chinatown.

All of a sudden, you could hear what sounded like firecrackers going off, only with a more metallic edge to the sound. Then there was screaming. A lot of screaming. I turned out the window and saw a young man nonchalantly shooting into the playground full of children and parents, who were scattering and screaming to avoid his aim. Everything suddenly was in slow motion and people started to scream and panic on the bus. Everyone fell to the floor that could. Pop! Pop! The gun shots were echoing down the street and the screams were like a nightmare. I got back down on the floor and watched people crying in their seats.

I decided to stand up to see about possibly trying to knock a window out or see more what the shooter looked like. As soon as I did that, I saw him turn towards the bus with his gun still shooting and he had what I felt like the Devil's smiling stare. His eyes locked on mine for a split second and then he turned back and continued shooting at the crowd. I could see that it was a black Glock and he must have shot about 7 shots by then.

What was to come will never leave my mind. Two young boys came up to the entrance of the playground and pleaded with him to let them out. He looked them for a second and then shot them both in the chest at near point-blank range. Everyone on the bus who was looking and saw that happen screamed. The shooter then shot one more shot and then ran away.

I could hear the bus driver telling people to get off the bus. People were crying and suddenly I could see some beefy guy in a business suit yell at the top of his lungs next to the driver to drive away. Suddenly the bus moved forward and people started getting up off the floor. I got off at the first stop I could to get the hell off the bus, which seemed like a sitting duck target. The walk home the rest of the way, my hands were just shaking and my adrenaline was making my heart pound. The sunset never looked so good.

It turned out that the shooter was some 17-year-old punk who basically showed up near the scene of the crime the next day and was arrested. From what I remember, the two boys survived and no one died. Many injuries, but no fatalities.

It really made you think about how our society is so jaded with so much violence on TV. But when it happens to you firsthand, you suddenly realize that you can't just change the channel. And it takes years to recover from what you saw. All I could listen to musically for a few months after that was Enya CDs. Listen and cry...

[babylonsister]

1. Wow. Thank you for sharing that painful experience.

Most of us can't even imagine a scenario such as that...

[keopeli]

2. I was walking in Westwood, CA in 87 and stepped into a gang fight.

The guy in front of me on the sidewalk, arm in arm with his girlfriend, was shot in the head, collapsed and died. I went to help the poor guy, but his wound couldn't be helped. His girlfriend kneeled beside him, shocked.

The shooter ran off into a parking lot. 2 minutes later, a helicopter chased and found him. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to 20+ years.

He might be out by now.

[zulchzulu]

26. It sounds like it all happened so quickly

That's what is particularly strange about these events that seem like an eternity when they are happening. They are usually no more than a minute or so, but the damage is done.

I can only imagine how long it must have felt in the VT shootings if you were stuck in that classroom...

[bluerum]

3. Ouch. Glad they got him off the street - glad you made it out ok. eom

[izzie]

4. Thank God in life I have missed anything like that.

I really fear guns and only a few in the family have had them. One who liked to drink and play with his guns I think put that fear in me. Frankly the state police took them away and kept them for years and no one said a thing. We all were glad they had them.

[Missy Vixen]

5. I don't know you, zulchzulu, and you don't know me

but I am hoping that you're able to be with someone you care for this evening, who cares for you, and that this will bring a measure of peace.

:hug:
Julie

[zulchzulu]

11. I have a very nice life now

Thanks for your response. It was cathartic to write this down... people need to understand just how fragile life is and how it can all turn so quickly when you least expect it...

[Poll_Blind]

6. Thank you for sharing that. No one can begin to describe a situation...

...like that but you did a damn good job and the hairs are standing up on the back of my neck. I cannot immagine the surreal nature, or the pain, the phantasmagoric horror of such an event. It is not ever, as a person once told me, like they show it in the movies. I sit children sometimes, mostly boys. And occasionally talk, though they're young, turns to guns. I do my best to steer it away or let them know, in a way that they can understand, that it's horrible beyond their imaginations.

  But while they can imagine so much, the monsters which lurk in the closet or the tentacled things under the soapwater in the tub, I still do not have the heart to tell them the truth: That there are no monsters or, more truthfully, that monsters do walk the earth.

  And they wear the masks of men.

Thank you,

PB

[zulchzulu]

13. It's a bad movie you can always play back when you don't want to

Whatever you can do to teach the children you take care of that guns and violence are just about the best explanation of what Hell really is.

Our society truly is bloodthirsty and sick... we're trained to see the worst in life as entertainment. But when the violence really shows its face before you, all you can do is shudder at the immense power of the darkness...of just how frail you are... of just how vulnerable we all are from the actions of a few.

[Mojorabbit]

7. To add to stories

I was a female teenager attending a basketball game in the 70's at a high school that was predominately black.I had gone into a phone booth to call my dad to pick me up. A black male approached me and put a knife to my neck demanding money from me. I about peed my pants.

I pointed and said,"There is my dad!" He dropped the knife from my neck and turned to look. I took off running. I will never forget it. I still have a small scar on my neck from the knife. I keep guns in my house. I am an expert shot.

Years later I was raped with another knife to my neck. A big scar from that and this from a guy I had known for years.

I do not have the luxury idea that because it has never happened to me that it cannot happen, ie for me it is not an intellectual excercise. Because.... it happened to me when I was young and did not really believe that there were people out there that did those kind of things, I mean it only happens it THOSE parts of town and only happens between THOSE kinds of people right? One of my bests friends was shot during a robbery not three blocks from me.

I will never be in that position again. Perhaps there are many here who have not been in a life or death situation, and think differently. That is ok with me. I only ask that you do not prevent me from being able to defend myself it I ever find myself in a similar place. I have had a few glasses of wine tonight so please forgive my writing. Yes, I am upset. Humans can be the absolute pits as a species.

[InvisibleTouch]

9. I was threatened once by a guy with a huge knife...

...right outside my front door. I ran him off by screaming at him at the top of my lungs to get lost, but I can tell you I was glad to have a gun in the house the rest of the day!

[zulchzulu]

10. Wow. I hope you've recovered as much as can be done...

You certainly need a hug. Take care.

[Mojorabbit]

17. I am fine

but thank you so very much. I really do appreciate it.
More than the flashbacks of violence an incident like this gives me is the freak out I get by the antigun people on this board that would take away my ability to defend myself. Like the cops were ever there when I needed them....

[Stevepol]

8. Makes you realize what people in a war zone, like Iraq, go thru many times over.

[tabasco]

12. I will never forget the sound of rifle fire in the Army ...

the first time it was not on the rifle range.

[frazzled]

14. Is it just me?

I've never witnessed a shooting (though I did witness a man fall/jump from an upper story to crash through the roof of the building below me as I was sitting at my desk at work--I had to call 911 to report it, and it is something I will never, ever forget) ... but yours is the reaction I have imagined would be inevitable in such a situation.

That is why I've been somewhat confused about the students I've seen interviewed today. Nearly all of them (with a few exceptions) have seemed strangely calm, even a few I've seen who were in the classroom and survived. Some seem nonchalant, others matter-of-fact. The editor of the student paper was giggling when questioned by John King. I keep expecting them to be dazed ... you know, that state of anxiety that leaves you breathless and sometimes inarticulate. But these kids, articulate and poised as they are, seem strangely unaffected to me. Perhaps it's the mode one adopts when placed before the national cameras. Perhaps it is just their age. But I have been finding it really strange: they seem like Stepford students to me in an odd way. I want someone to freak out, because that to me seems like the natural response. Maybe the freaking ones are in the dorm rooms curled up in balls and so don't get on TV.

[flying_monkeys]

15. They looked to me like they were still on "auto-pilot"

and hadn't really processed the event yet.


Now if I were the one who had been there and witnessed that carnage? I'd be on anxiety pills already....... Or, more likely, back home at my parents (safe) house tonight....

[Mojorabbit]

16. I think that will come later

when the adrenalin rush has passed.Truly.

[zulchzulu]

18. They are still in shock...that has to be the case

Unless they have totally desensitized themselves by playing Doom non-stop or whatever and don't know what is real vs. what is not, they are just simply in shock. It just hasn't sunk in yet. When they start seeing photos of those that died or have a chance to reflect on what happened, they will certainly start reliving it. After all the big camera crews leave and the initial international shock fades, then the fog of protective numbness will clear. And then they will grieve and begin healing...which will last their whole lives.

I would not want to be any of them that saw what happened up close. Now is the calm before the very emotional storm.

[Missy Vixen]

19. They're in shock

>I want someone to freak out, because that to me seems like the natural response.<

The reaction to what happened to them today may not come for hours, days, weeks afterwards, but it's going to come.

My heart breaks for them and their loved ones. I can't stop thinking about parents, loved ones and friends who are going through the hell of loss right now.

Julie

p.s. I witnessed a guy brandishing a pistol out of a car window while I was stopped at a traffic light in Redmond, WA about five years ago. He was probably 20 feet from my car. I was just fine till I was done telling the 911 operator what I'd seen, then I was shaking and crying. I think something like this affects everyone differently, and my experience was a fraction of the experiences of those who tried to aid the injured and keep the shooter out of those classrooms today.

[pitohui]

21. it is indeed shock, there is a feeling of this didn't happen, it is on teevee

there is a blank feeling, not sure how to describe it, but i assume there are actual brain chemicals that cause what i have experienced, it is not rare

i once saw a heron caught on a fishing wire that was dying, its wing already completely destroyed down to the bone by the trap caused by this line, i could not get across the drainage ditch to put the bird out of its struggle, the bird, whose body was 1/3 already completely destroyed, had a calm and determined look on its face, it was not afraid, it would rest and then struggle again, it was without fear or pain, it looked directly at me across the water w.out fear or awareness of the reality of its horrible and unfixable situation, this is shock which i think exists to protect us from a horrible experience and give us that final bit of will to keep fighting to the end

i was once told that shock evolved to keep an animal from being in pain during a crushing injury from being eaten so it could continue, albeit in a state of dissociation, to struggle and have some hope of escape, and i am under the impression that all birds and mammals including humans experience shock -- the case of humans, the loss of another who is close to us can also trigger the shock and denial -- it is nature's way to keep us going when otherwise we could not

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Let me explain

From my own experience

We responded to a shoot out, between the police and the narcos... to put it mildly there were AKs involved.

In the middle of this mess was a victim, injured, critically injured

I was 20 at the time, and I took the decision to crawl and grab victim and drag him out.

From the moment I took the decision until we transfered victim to EMS (US) all seemed to go into slow mo.

Everything had a very intense taste and smell, and I could hear my heart with every pull I took of my arms as I inched closer to this gnetleman... yet there was a calm inside of me, that is not unlike these kids.

Now, after we transfered him and I finally could relax, and adrenalin came down, away from anybody else, I completely broke down, realizing the stupidity I had just done, and that I could very well have been placed in a body bag.

the calm you are seeing from those kids, is the calm before the storm, before they realize what just happened. When it does... they will break down... I can almost guarantee it... and it will happen in private most likely...

Oh and this repeated with every shooting I happened to go to. We were calm until we left the scene and transfered patients, or in one case nursed the rig back to the station.

[pitohui]

20. what do you do, where do you go? w these feelings, i still don't know

i actually have more than one story, which is fucking pathetic, but your story catches the essence of what it's like

my response wasn't enya cd's but i remember once at a picnic in the country, some car backfires or something on a country road, and i hit the ground -- much to the amusement of all involved -- i didn't even think, it's like hit the ground first and worry about looking dumb-ass later

i can't even imagine what soldiers who are shot at every day for a year (i guess now for 15 months) must go thru

[zulchzulu]

23. It's like a lizard hiding in the back of your brain

Watching violence in real life has a sort of reptilian nature to it. In order to survive at the moment it's happening, you have be numb and detached and let the adrenaline wash over you and become ready...for...what...ever... suddenly all is in slow motion and you have the most pristine focus than you've ever had, it seems.

Then the numbness fades as the event ends...and if you survive... it's as though this little lizard of memory slips in back of your mind and waits to jump out when something triggers it.

That backfire you heard triggered that cold creature of memory front and center in your mind. Like you said, imagining anyone involved in any war (let alone the ones now being fought with no clear, definable enemy) and being either a victim or implementor of incredible, savage violence for long periods must be so insurmountable to deal with on a clear conscience. You'd have to shut down or compartmentalize all the events or literally go insane.

I hoped you've healed as best as possible.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. True story

both I and my husband have been on line of fire

A large fire work goes off

I hit the deck, he crouches looking for a gun that is not there and for a target.

We stand up, realizing what happened and start laughing HARD

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. The horror is something that you never forget

in that you are correct

tonight I fear I will not sleep well, but it comes with the territory...

thank whoever you belive in that you were not hurt and that nobody got killed.

As to the punks... famous words from one I took to the hospital after he shot three people and he was shot by a cop

"Duele de la chingada" it hurts like a mother fucker... rough translation... but I will never forget his eyes either, just like you will probably never forget those eyes. Two different people, same look... what you described is exactly what I saw in the eyes of that kid