What its like to survive a school shooting
A decade after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the story of a 10-year-old girl who survived the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex. \u2014 and how she has become a voice for the friends she lost that day.
Read more:
After a school shooting, we often hear numbers \u2014 how many children and teachers were killed or injured. But for the survivors and their families, the trauma can be overwhelming.
\u201cI think the scope of this crisis is so much larger than people are willing to acknowledge,\u201d reporter John Woodrow Cox says. \u201cIt's not just the kids who died. It's not just kids who got shot. It's not just the kids like Caitlyne who listen to the whole thing happen and lost dear friends. It's third-graders, it's teachers and their kids. It's cousins. It's people in the community who thought, \u2018Is my kid dead?\u2019 That damage cannot be undone.\u201d
With the permission of Caitlyne Gonzales and her parents, John spent the summer with the 10-year-old school shooting survivor, following her as she went to karate and guitar lessons, rallies for gun reform in Texas and Washington, school board meetings and back to school. He was also there with her family in the evenings, when Caitlyne\u2019s trauma was the most apparent and she struggled to go to sleep without her mom. Caitlyne and her parents wanted people to see that while on the outside she might look like a composed activist, she\u2019s still dealing with an enormous amount of trauma.
John has been reporting on children and gun violence for more than five years and is the author of an award-winning book on the subject, \u201cChildren Under Fire: An American Crisis.\u201d