When I read about the mass killings, I always ask myself, what would have happened if the shooter were killed before s/he could kill anyone? Would we hear about it if this how it would end up in the school rampage, which took the lives of 26 people?
Or the shooting in the movie theater, or that rampage at Virginia Tech?
What if I tell you that there were supposed to be a mass shooting in Daytona Beach, and the only reason you did not hear about it is because the shooter died first?
A few weeks ago we were stunned to learn from the news that a young man, just 20 years old, armed with a shotgun, started shooting at cars in the street at about 4 AM, and then broke the glass and entered Halifax Medical Center and terrorized nurses and patients?
What if I tell yo that he threatened to kill them? Walked into the room where the nurse was attending to an old lady, put her on her knees and demanded oral sex?
But she grabbed the shotgun and the fight erupted? And she screamed for help, but Police, running the floors, could not hear them from the closed doors of that vast usually quiet space?
And that he finally pulled the gun with all his strength out of the nurse’s hands and at that moment the barrel was tight to his chest and the shotgun went off killing the guy?
And hearing the shot, the Police rushed to the room and stormed the door?
The Police reported that he did just that, committed a suicide.
Because the guy had his pants down, and demanded sexual favors, the Police in the news did not name the nurse.
Oddly enough, when we were talking to our client, she mentioned that she was close to dying very recently. She was that nurse in the room where it all ended.
She said she was not so sure it really was a suicide. She told me that it was, probably, an accident. She said her fingers were still hurting after he pulled the shotgun out of her hands, but he pulled it with such force, that the barrel hit his chest and at that moment it went off and killed the guy.
Who knows if that’s how he wanted, or it just happened.
Because she fought the guy, she is here and he is dead. She wouldn’t make it to the cable networks… after all nobody died except for this 20-year old guy.
But this is the beauty of the story. He was asking nurses whether they wanted to die that morning. But he died first.
The nurse is traumatized. She is not working right now, undergoing counseling.
Probably she saved more than her own life. We do not know who might have died if he had it his way…
If we know that someone had prevented the death of people, we would call him/her a hero. But do we know them? There was no killing, there were no cameras days and night, nothing happened. There was no news.
Imagine the news “the Police officer shot and killed several men in Boston’s Logan Airport, who allegedly were planning to hijack the plane and fly in into the World Trade Center tower in New York”
Now, knowing what happened next, would we consider this officer a hero?
Imagine, how many heroes' names we never heard. Nothing happened because of them.
Nothing happened...what a blessing!
Photo by born1945 via Flickr.com
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