TK Arnold: Carlsbad’s Defining Moment

by Thomas K. Arnold on October 13, 2010

Img 0414The tragedy could have been a calamity. Had gunman Brendan O’Rourke not been tackled by three heroic construction workers as he was fumbling with his gun, the senseless shootings last Friday at Kelly School in Carlsbad could have gone on—and we might have had one of the worst massacres in history instead of just two little girls being shot in the arm.

Moments after writing this opening line, I felt ashamed. “Just two little girls”—as though that isn’t tragic enough. Two little girls, 6 and 7 years old, happy that it’s Friday, happy that the school week’s coming to an end, probably looking forward to a soccer game Saturday morning and maybe a visit to the pumpkin patch or Legoland in the afternoon. A point in space, in time, and their lives are changed, possibly forever—strapped to a gurney, rushed to a hospital, worked over by doctors. Their physical wounds will heal, but their emotional ones? No one can tell.
The same goes for the emotional damage inflicted on the Kelly School community, and the entire city of Carlsbad. For in those few seconds of gunfire, Brendan O’Rourke not only committed an atrocious, unspeakably evil act against innocent children, he single-handledly destroyed Carlsbad’s own innocence, as well. On that afternoon, that sad and fateful Friday afternoon, Carlsbad ceased to be a quiet, peaceful town and officially joined such other once-quiet, once-peaceful towns as Columbine, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and DeKalb, Ill., as cities that have fallen victim to savage horrors inflicted on their young people.

We’ve had murders before in Carlsbad, but nothing as random as this—and certainly nothing in which the intended victims were little kids. Maybe that’s why, as Carlsbad parents try to cope with the shootings, try to make some sense of the senselessness, so many of us are silently hoping police find a connection between the gunman and the school—a custody dispute, a bitter divorce, a child or nephew or niece at the school. Finding such a connection certainly wouldn’t diminish the heinousness of Brendan O’Rourke’s brutal actions, but they would certainly mitigate the helplessness we feel at the thought that Kelly School was chosen at random and what happened there that Friday afternoon could happen anywhere, at any time, to any of us—and to any of our children.

A day after the shootings, I took my youngest son, Hunter, to Legoland, for the theme park’s annual Brick or Treat celebration. Looking at the throngs of costumed kids and adults, I thought how easy it would be for someone with ill intentions to sneak in there and inflict damage. One man was dressed as a hobo; I actually followed him around to see if he had a kid with him, or had come alone.

I don’t like having thoughts like that. But I don’t see them going away—not for a long time, maybe not ever. For Carlsbad, the Kelly School shootings were a defining moment, and neither the city nor its citizens will ever be the same.

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