-School shootings, devastating
attacks at an educational institution involving
the use of firearms. The earliest recorded school
shooting in the US dates back to 1764 dubbed the Pontiac’s
Rebellion School Massacre. Since then, school shootings
have unfortunately only become exponentially more common with
incidents like the Columbine, Virginia Tech, Parkland, and Sandy Hook shootings receiving
mass media coverage and serving as primary examples for the demand
of increased gun control, but most school shootings do not
receive such widespread coverage. In just 46 weeks of last year,
there were 45 school shootings and firearms are now
the second leading cause of death among
American children and adolescence after car crashes. This discussion is
so heavily focused here in the US due to the unfortunate
reality that the US has had 57 times as
many school shootings as all other major industrialized
nations combined. My name is Anthony Padilla
and today I’m going to be sitting down with survivors
of school shootings to learn what it’s really
like to live through such a traumatic
and earth-shattering event. Were these survivors able
to come out the other side of this horrifying event with
a newfound drive to experience all the joy that life has to offer, or do they live every day frozen
with fear and deeply tormented by the inexplicable evil
they’ve experienced at the hands of one of their peers? [music] -Hello, Aalayah. -Hi. [music] -Will. -Hey, Anthony.
How are you doing, man? [music] -Sadie. -Hi, Anthony. [music] -Thank you so much for coming
on here and teaching me about the world
of surviving a school shooting. -Thank you for having me. -How would you describe yourself?
A survivor? Someone who simply
experienced the unthinkable? -I would say someone that went
through a school shooting. -I do classify myself as a survivor. -At this point now I don’t label
myself as a school shooting survivor. I am but it’s not my identity. -Can you tell us what year
and what school you were attending, and if you can recall the events
leading up to this incident? -I went to Columbine High School. The school shooting happened
on April 20th, 1999. -Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School in Parkland, Florida. Our school shooting happened
on February 14th, the year was 2018. -I went to school at Reynolds High
School in Troutdale, Oregon in 2014. I remember it being
the last day of school. This morning I was going
into my seventh-period classroom which was my gym class. I remember seeing
my gym teacher running from the gym building
to our main building. I just kept walking,
I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t think anything was wrong. I remember seeing all my classmates
just running to the back of the gym. 60 kids just sitting
in this hallway, terrified. Hearing people saying
that there was a shooter, that they heard shots
but in that moment, it’s like you don’t believe it. I remember hearing someone
talk about seeing someone in the gym looking around
for people and with a gun. I was stunned by that. They walked out the gym
and I remember hearing one gunshot. That’s when it finally struck me that
something was actually happening. The shooter had a specific
plan and that plan was to kill all of the kids
that were in my gym classes. He had a journal that
said that he wanted to kill and shoot
all of the sinners. In his mind, we all deserved to die, and the one person
that did pass away unfortunately was
the one that actually saw the gun and started it before
the shooter could do any more harm. -They alerted other people? -Yes, it was because of them that
we all pretty much survived because the plan was to wait until
we were all in the gym together, and then just go at it. -It was the last period of the day. It was actually my only class
that I had in 1200 building. My teacher had us present
our projects and then we began to work on our lesson
on our computers. I’d say five minutes into
me sitting at my desk is when we heard
the first round of shots. The entire class just
immediately paused. Then we heard the second
round of shots and that’s when we immediately
all got up and ran. Half of us ran to the corner that is designated for an active
shooter drill. I remember sitting
down in the corner still hearing my classmates saying,
"It’s just a drill because you guys know we’re
supposed to have a drill. They said they were going to make
it really realistic this time." I remember telling myself,
"If this is real, I’m very petite so if I were
to get hit anywhere I probably would not survive,
so let me get behind something," and the only thing that was in front of me was my classmate
Nicholas Dworet. I scooched between
him and the bookshelf. I looked down at my phone to call my mom and as I lifted
my thumb to press the green call button
is when the shooter started shooting into my classroom. I started to see red
trickle onto the-- Like a puddle of red on the floor
and I’m like, "Oh, maybe it’s just a paintball gun. This is just not
a funny senior prank, but it can’t be anything
other than that." I look up and I see my classmate
Helena slumped over on the wall and it snapped
to me that she was dead. As soon as I recognized her,
it was when Nicholas Dworet in front of me started to slowly
fall to the ground. I just remember telling myself
to match every movement of his body. I followed his body to the floor
and I laid underneath him until the shooter moved
on to the other classrooms. I remember laying there and I was
looking at the floor because I wanted to know when
I needed to hold my breath, so I can look as dead as possible
if the perpetrator got closer. I was just,
of course, in a state of shock but I was still not safe
because I was in complete view of the door and we don’t
know how many shooters there were, who it was, what they looked like. Two of my classmates pulled
me behind a filing cabinet, I’m calling my parents, I’m telling
them my last goodbyes because, of course, I’m not thinking
I’m making it out alive. I wanted to make
sure that they could hear me in the middle
of all the noise, so I didn’t hold my phone like this,
I held it like this saying, "I love you,"
and then the call dropped. My mom told me she was hysterical. She went outside the house
and started screaming, and then my dad told me there was
one point where he thought I did die because he heard
the bullets and then the phone dropped,
so he thought I got shot. Both of my parents
didn’t think I made it. -I went to the library before school and hung out with
a couple of friends. We all kind of went
our separate ways to class and so I took a couple
of tests in various classes. I felt like I nailed the test. I was done early and so I just had
like 10 minutes to stop and think. I actually stopped and I said
a prayer. I felt this need to pray. It was not like
a premonition of anything bad to come but I just felt
a little bit of gratitude. I went and I met
my buddy at his locker and we walked down to the lunchroom, then we went outside
to the same place where we eat lunch every
day when it’s warm. We were sitting out there hanging
out and then all of a sudden, we heard some fireworks
going off and we were like, "Hey, there’s probably
a senior prank going on. Let’s go see what they are doing."
We got up and we took a couple of steps in the direction where
we heard the firecrackers. We saw shooters on top of the hill. One of the very first things
that I saw, like the most vivid memory, is just seeing
the dirt flying off the ground. I have that free frame
in my head and I looked up and I see a smile
on this guy’s face. A kid named Sean Graves
and he just instantly drops to his knees
and starts screaming. They shot him in the back
and they shot him again. All of a sudden it’s like, this is not a senior prank
and it got really real. I ran inside to that door that
I had come out of for lunch, which is probably
just 5-10 feet away. The very first person
I saw when I ran inside was my track coach Dave Sanders
and so I said, "Hey, coach, there’s a shooting
going on outside." Dave starts telling
a bunch of people and one of the people
I see very next is a guy that was
on my basketball team. He was just getting ready to walk
out that door and I was like, "Don’t go. Don’t go.
There’s a shooting out there." He’s like, "Stop BS-ing me." I slammed his tray down and I said,
"I’m not joking. Let’s go." -It almost sounds too
unthinkable to even be a reality. -It was like walking into
a totally different world. I was in there for maybe a minute
and then the energy flipped. You could see the fear
in their eyes. That fear in their eyes
transferred to other people. They were like, "What is going on?" I took him and a few other
buddies and I was like, "Let’s go to the bathrooms
and hide." We went into these bathrooms
and they were kind of behind the cafeteria
in this hidden little spot. We all got into one stall
and climbed up on the toilet because we didn’t want the shooters
to come in and see our feet. I stopped and I said a prayer just,
"God, help my sister to get out of here. Help me to get out
of here and be safe." While I was praying, I heard
an explosion and it shook the wall. -That place was no longer safe. -The moment we walked
out of the bathroom, there is a door next
to it and it goes up into the stage. It’s actually my elementary
school choir teacher who was now teaching
at the high school who opened that door and he’s like
forever a hero to me because If he doesn’t open
the door at that time, I’m trapped a little
bit and we just slowly are walking through
this backstage area. We peek out the hallway when we get
to the top of the auditorium. We actually hear gunfire
down the hallway. "Look, it’s kind of clear,"
so we just run and book it and we just started hightailing
it to an apartment complex that was nearby,
so we could call our parents. -Before we continue learning about the world of surviving
a school shooting. Do you feel the shooter
received fair punishment? -In the state of Florida
we do have the death penalty, so that is in question. Honestly, I don’t know
what I would like either. -I wanted to take a moment
to once again thank all of you for keeping
the comments on these videos so incredibly
empathetic as I cover topics that are
sensitive like this one, and for encouraging our guests
to feel comfortable talking about these deeply personal
experiences in front of all of you. I’ve included some
links down below to some resources that I hope
can be helpful, and I’ll go ahead
and put a few links up in this corner that you can click if you want to see
me cover more topics with some incredibly
brave survivors, like kidnapping survivors
and survivors of police brutality. Now, back to the world
of surviving a school shooting. Can you even begin
to describe the fear you felt while
the shooting was occurring, or is that something
so painful you tend to block it out so you don’t
have to relive it? -I don’t know
if I really felt a sense of fear as he was shooting
into the classroom. It was more so a sense of survival. Then I felt the fear when he moved
on to the other classrooms because I guess that’s when
it registered in my mind. -The pain for me isn’t the fear. The pain is loss,
a loss of like my classmates, my track coach,
and those people who died. The pain isn’t like
what I had to go through in terms of being afraid
for a small period of time, but it was terrifying. Just thinking I could die any time. -Was there ever a moment where
you thought, "This might be it, I might not make it out of here." -I remember at one point
I just started talking to God and I told him, "Please just
make this as painless as possible and I don’t want to feel
any pain, I don’t want to suffer." -You were convinced that
those were your final moments. -I am shocked at how
accepting I was of it. I think in the moment
there was no room for survival or surviving like,
"Okay, this is the end." -Luckily my high school was very,
very, very close to a police department. They showed up, they found us
in the back and pretty much with rifles in their hands started yelling
at us to come out single file, get into a line with our hands up
and then they let us out by running across the parking lot to a church
that was across the street. After that,
we all just stood there for hours waiting for them to figure out how to get us to another parking
lot for our parents to pick us up. -I’d say within 10 to 15 minutes
is when help finally came, and I remember hearing them
like break the rest of the glass in the window and open
the door and say "Broward County Sheriff’s Office,"
or something. Then I got up from behind
the filing cabinet and I remember them yelling,
"Don’t look up, down, left or right. Just look straight
ahead and run outside." I remember passing three more
bodies on the way in the hallway. Then I got outside and got in my mom’s
custody around 9:30 that night. -Do you remember what
it felt like when you realized for the first
time that you were safe,
that you were going to be okay? -I didn’t realize I was safe
until I was in police custody and they were taking my clothes
and picking body matter out of my hair. At that point,
I knew everything was okay. Yes, that was a long time
of not knowing what’s going on. -While you didn’t know how
many casualties there were, you didn’t know how "bad" it was for lack of a better term,
you could only fill in the blanks in your head and assume
it was the worst. -Yes, I didn’t know how many
people died until 8:30 that night. I remember my phone was
literally on 1% and I got a notification on the top
of my screen that said, "Parkland shooting.
16 casualties, numbers to rise." -You were learning when the rest
of the world was learning. -For the most part, we learned
things with the rest of the world. -It wasn’t until I was with my mom
and my dad that I actually felt safe. I didn’t feel safe
like waiting outside, just sitting there like
a duck waiting to get shot. It wasn’t till I felt the comfort
of my parents that something clicked. -What did your parents say
the first time you saw them? They must have been
really going through it. -The first thing that my mom
said to me was, "It was Emilio." Emilio being the kid that got shot and I got teary-eyed
but I tried to keep it together. -It was nine o’clock
and she came to the Marriott and got me and I just
remember hugging her. The detective was like, "Don’t touch each other because she’s still
evidence," or something like that. I got upset and I was like,
"Y’all literally have my clothes, y’all have my pictures,
you have my statement. What else do you need?" -Yes. "Let me hug my mom please,
the only thing that might possibly make me feel
okay in these moments." -Yes.
I was very upset, but thankfully my mom calmed me down
and we went home, and I just remember going
home and everything scared me. I probably slept with my mom for like
three weeks after the shooting. -Do you remember the first thing
you did when you got back home? -I probably got home
at like 8:00 or 9:00 that night and the shooting
was at like 11:00. I just remember being
emotionally exhausted, just like, "Oh, my gosh,
I got to go." I just fell asleep. -Yes, you spent all that time not
just being afraid for your life, but then also being
afraid for the safety of everyone that you know
and love on campus too. -Absolutely. -I hopped straight in the shower
because, of course, I had blood and stuff on me. -I feel it must have almost
felt like it wasn’t real but then you have that confirmation
that it’s actually real. -Sometimes it’s really hard to just
recognize that it actually happened, let alone like in those few hours and days afterward,
it was really hard. -How has your day-to-day life
changed since the incident? -Those first moments you’re not like focusing about work
or school or anything, you just need to be around
the people that love you and just be together
and try to like find some joy. Then there’s like
this transition of getting back to school and just trying
to pick up life again. There’s the next couple
years after that of-- I think about the shooting
every single day, it’s like a major part of my life, and I can’t get it out
of my head but I have to focus and like there isn’t as much
of the excuse anymore that, "I went through this," you got to get going,
but I still didn’t feel healed. -How long did it take before
you returned back to school? -I believe it was two weeks. Then we had one week
back and then the week after that one week back,
it was spring break. It was not that bad. We had like two emotional
support dogs in the class. Majority of my graduation
class team say we only made it through because
of the dogs, they were really great. Just imagine having dogs
everywhere you look at school. -I would be okay with that. -We literally just like talked
with each other, we played UNO, we were just trying to do
anything that was therapeutic, that would make us feel
okay because it was already very uncomfortable to be
there in the first place. -What do you think
was the most difficult part about returning to normalcy? -Having to deal with
that emotional trauma, it has been the hardest
part of returning normalcy because there is
no normalcy after that, it’s just continuing forward,
going to college and moving away and going to prom
and doing all these things that are normal kid stuff
but it doesn’t feel normal anymore. -Is there that idea that
there’s before the event and then after the event
in your memory timeline? -It woke me up to a lot
of the problems that are happening in this country, and that those things
aren’t going to get done unless we as the generation actually talk about it,
that this is affecting us. -Did this experience have any
unexpected psychological effects on you? -I was diagnosed with PTSD and I had
to go to a counselor for a while and there’s no overstating how
difficult that is to deal with. I think people need to give
themselves some space and come up with a plan on how they can get better
but not be too hard on themselves. -I feel like many of us after
dealing with any traumatic event, we’ll kind of feel like
we need to kick ourselves into gear to just get things back
to normal, but you really can’t, like things don’t ever
go back to normal, you almost have to learn how to live this new way of living with that
experience, with that trauma. -It’s not like I’m totally
healed and over it. I still cry when I think
about my friends that we lost. It’s a very emotional experience
but it doesn’t take up the same space, like you kind
of learn to work around it. -I do have PTSD,
insomnia, anxiety and depression. PTSD is like a 24-hour thing seven
days a week, so I can’t escape that, and depression sometimes it can
feel like it’s year-round, sometimes it can feel like
it’s seasonal but it’s definitely at a higher level when we get
to the month of February. Really thinking, what was I doing
this day before this shooting? Just thinking back how
normal life was up until the 14th and how drastic
my life has changed. -Do you feel the shooter
received fair punishment? -Well, they killed themselves. I’d say no, there is no
justice for stealing a life. There’s nothing you can do
to make somebody whole again. You can’t focus on,
"This person needs to pay." There’s nothing you can do.
There’s no payment ever. It’s been robbed from you,
and you just have to come to terms with that,
like that life’s been taken. We just have to enjoy
and appreciate what we have in life
and keep moving forward. -He’s alive and the trial
has not begun. I actually did my deposition
for the pretrial two weeks ago, which was very, very, very hard. In the State of Florida,
we do have the death penalty, so that is in question. Honestly, I don’t know
what I would like either. It’s very hard to think about. It’s something that
a lot of the victims’ parents are also struggling with. A lot of people want
the death penalty. A lot of people want him
to suffer inside of the jail. -Why do you think the deposition was
so difficult for you to go through? -Going through my trauma, but going through my trauma
in a completely different way, it’s a different way to go
through this experience in an interview rather
than a deposition, because in a deposition,
they break down every small detail. -It must be really difficult knowing
that in order to seek justice, many of you have to relive that
trauma over and over and over again. -It’s not just the students that
lived it that’s reliving it. It’s not just the siblings
of people that lost their lives. It’s not just teachers,
it’s literally all of us, including the victims’ parents. Those should be the people
the most that should be trying to focus on figuring out
their new normal, but instead, they’re faced with reliving
their traumas as well. It’s really hard. -Ana Vines wants to know if you knew
the perpetrators beforehand, and if there were any
behaviors that they displayed that people should be
made more aware of. -No, I didn’t know him but high
school talks-- I did hear some stories that he would bring
dead frogs or lizards to class, and chop them up on the desk. There were signs, it’s just
certain people didn’t do their jobs when it came to following
up with these behaviors. -I did know who they were, but I wasn’t
friends with them or didn’t have any kind of relationship there. They had been arrested
for little small crimes like breaking into a van or setting
off some explosives. One of the kid’s moms found
a sawed-off shotgun on his dresser. There were little signs that
if people I think had taken more seriously,
they could have stopped it for sure. -Did your school have any protocols or anything for this kind
of emergency? -We had never done
anything like that. We were just reacting
to a circumstance that we thought would never happen. -No, not at all, actually. We found out later that
none of the security cameras worked in the school. -They were up, but they did nothing? -They were just not running. We had never done any active
shooting, like exercises or anything. We had the fire drills,
earthquake drills, but school shooting was never really
thought of from where I’m from. -That week alone was pretty interesting
because all week our teachers were telling us that we were going
to have an active shooter drill. They are a band-aid
on the real issue. Who is to say that the perpetrator
doesn’t also know the same policies, because normally school
shooters are students. They know exactly what corner you’re
going to and where you’re hiding. -What do you think
should be done to prevent others from going through
an experience like this? -We need to make our education
system prosper that kind of learning where it’s okay
to talk about emotions, that if we can do that work now,
hopefully that will help in the future. -I think a real way to solve
this issue is making sure that we’re having the proper
legislation in place that makes it harder for people
that are deemed a harm to themselves or other people
to obtain such lethal weapons. I also believe that there needs
to be an assault weapons ban. Clearly,
we’ve seen at my high school, 17 people in less than six minutes. There’s no reason a civilian should
need a gun with that much power. -Absolutely not. -I think really folks that
survive school shootings need to be in the forefront
of this change. -How do you feel the US
government is handling the topic of school
shootings and gun control? -They are terrible. All of these
different sections within gun violence are solved
in different ways, but they all need to be
within the conversation, and we know that our government
does not do that at all. Majority of gun
violence happens within marginalized communities of color. Black and brown youth bear
the brunt of gun violence. They’re the people that deal with
it day-to-day because I think legislation can be a way that
we prevent mass shootings, but I don’t think legislation
would be a way that we prevent gun violence in marginalized
communities of color. We need resources into those
communities. We need money. We need proper schools,
we need proper jobs. We need actual, real hard
resources in these communities. -How do you feel about
the proposal for teachers to have guns to defend
their students? -I wouldn’t feel safe being
in an environment that already has a gun. -Because the gun that was used
during this senseless act of violence that you endured was stolen from
someone who attained the gun legally. It really wouldn’t be that different than someone taking
a gun from a teacher. -It would be so much
easier for someone to get their hands on a gun within
a school. If we had actual guns. -Teachers already are
working a job that is almost without
a shadow of a doubt being-- They’re being
underpaid and also they’re around
children all the time. Then to expect them to know
what to do in the case of an emergency with a weapon of destruction in their hand. -It doesn’t feel right to push
that onto them as well. Well, if this is going to happen,
you’re going to have to be the person
that saves all of these kids. It feels like a lot of pressure. -How do you feel when
people say things like, "Guns don’t kill people,
people kill people." -Guns are strictly made to kill
something at the end of the day, have since colonization
been used to suppress and kill and discriminate
against people of color, oppress different
kinds of generations. It’s in the history of guns. When people say "Guns don’t kill
people, humans kill people." You’re wrong,
the guns are killing the person. If that person didn’t have the gun,
they wouldn’t be killing the human. -Even if they could say,
"If we take the gun away, they’re going to find another mean,"
it’s like, "Yes, but those other means won’t
cause harm in the same way." -Most of those means aren’t
as easy to use as a gun, because you can separate
yourself from the gun, you can be at a far distance,
whereas in like a knife or something like that takes
a little bit more to do harm. Guns are created
for the use of killing. That’s what guns are made
for and that is why we’re having this serious conversation
of possibly having gun legislation to stop
that from happening. -What’s something you wish you could
say to people who don’t understand the severity of the reality of school
shootings in modern society? -Every single life is so important. We need to protect kids
and protect lives because we don’t know what kids
could grow up and accomplish. You have to realize
how much pain there is in the loss of one kid
because you might be like, "That’s just one kid that died." -Just one kid, that’s already--
That’s not even, that’s not right. -If it’s somebody in your family,
your sister, your brother,
your daughter, you are devastated. -These events don’t just affect
the person directly involved, they affect the entire community,
the families, and everyone involved who has
ever even known that person. -Yes, and it’s just
so important that we do like eradicate that
evil from within us. We need to get rid of the hate,
get rid of the anger, and try to find ways
to be more peaceful. -Have you felt like
you’ve been able to get any semblance of closure
since the shooting? -No, I think I will
have closure if they are able to clean up that
building because, again, it’s left the exact
same way that I last thought because the jury
has to walk through. -All the bullets, and blood
and everything is still preserved, it’s still there right now? -Yes, but if they are able to after
the trial clean up the building and make it look like how
it looked when we were normal, and I’m able to walk
through and see it that way, I think that would
be closure for me. -Remembering the victims,
remembering the people that died will be something
that I always work for, and I always want to be able
to think about the people that died and not let
their lives be lost to history. I wouldn’t say that I closed
that era in my life. I remember it because
it’s important to remember, but I also can move
on and still find happiness. It’s a careful line to balance. It’s like remembering
but not dwelling. -Don’t let it control
your entire life, but at the same time
don’t try to bury it. -Exactly. -If there’s anyone watching who has
survived a school shooting and feels isolated and maybe even experiences
PTSD regarding the incident, is there anything that
you’d want to say to them? -There is a road
for you to be happy again. It may not feel like
it’s possible or look like it. Find people that can be
supportive of you and love you and help take care
of you and just start building your life back, one day at a time. -All right. You got five
seconds to shout out or promote anything you want directly
into the camera. Go. -If you want to learn more about gun violence prevention
and racial equity, check out TeamEnough.org or ConcernedCitizens
on Instagram and Twitter. You can find me on Instagram @AalayahEastmond or Twitter
@AalayahEastmond. -Go check out EmilioInc.org
just to help out my community. They do dome amazing stuff. -If you want to give back
to the Columbine community, you can do so by donating
to ColumbineMemorial.org. If you want help and want to talk,
my Instagram is @wfbeck83. Feel free to reach out. -Thank you so much, Aalayah. I feel like I understand
the world of surviving a school shooting just
a little bit more. -Thank you for having me. -After spending the day
with these incredibly resilient school shooting survivors, I’ve come to understand just
how much strength one must possess to not only experience
such unspeakable trauma, but also to possess the courage
required to discuss these horrifying and vulnerable experiences on camera
in front of millions of viewers. See you later. Bye, guys. -Press a like. [music] -How is the 4th of July
in the US for you? -I don’t like it. [laughter] -Yes. -Not at all. -Right. -My sister has to go through it, I have to go through
it and then my military father also has PTSD
from being at war. We have all of those put together. -You’ve all been traumatized
by the sound of gunfire. -Exactly, so at least we have
something in common. [laughs] -Right. Not necessarily something
that you want to have in common. -No, but we’re here now.
We moved on.
I can't watch Anthony without thinking about Smosh
Is this the Smosh guy
She lost me when she brought race into it.