{"id":9194,"date":"2010-10-13T08:32:01","date_gmt":"2010-10-13T15:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/?p=9194"},"modified":"2010-10-13T08:34:47","modified_gmt":"2010-10-13T15:34:47","slug":"tk-arnold-carlsbads-defining-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/?p=9194","title":{"rendered":"TK Arnold: Carlsbad’s Defining Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Img<\/a>The tragedy could have been a calamity. Had gunman Brendan O\u2019Rourke 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\u2014and we might have had one of the worst massacres in history instead of just two little girls being shot in the arm.<\/p>\n

Moments after writing this opening line, I felt ashamed. \u201cJust two little girls\u201d\u2014as though that isn\u2019t tragic enough. Two little girls, 6 and 7 years old, happy that it\u2019s Friday, happy that the school week\u2019s 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\u2014strapped to a gurney, rushed to a hospital, worked over by doctors. Their physical wounds will heal, but their emotional ones? No one can tell.
\nThe 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\u2019Rourke not only committed an atrocious, unspeakably evil act against innocent children, he single-handledly destroyed Carlsbad\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had murders before in Carlsbad, but nothing as random as this\u2014and certainly nothing in which the intended victims were little kids. Maybe that\u2019s 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\u2014a custody dispute, a bitter divorce, a child or nephew or niece at the school. Finding such a connection certainly wouldn\u2019t diminish the heinousness of Brendan O\u2019Rourke\u2019s 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\u2014and to any of our children.<\/p>\n

A day after the shootings, I took my youngest son, Hunter, to Legoland, for the theme park\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like having thoughts like that. But I don\u2019t see them going away\u2014not 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tragedy could have been a calamity. Had gunman Brendan O\u2019Rourke 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\u2014and we might have had one of the worst massacres in history instead of just two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9194"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9199,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions\/9199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}