Mom who survived school shooting coaches son through Oregon attack: ‘Please be as quiet as possible’
New York Post · RC · trust 44/100
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Michelle, who did not share her last name, sent a bone-chilling string of texts to her boy assuring him he and his brother would survive the bloodshed — and repeatedly reminding him: “I love you so much.”
“I was just in shock. I was like, how can this happen? How can lightning strike twice?” Michelle told CNN.
“How can I go through this and then my children go through this?”
Michelle’s fifth-grader called her from his Apple Watch at 1 p.m. Thursday — just one minute after authorities were called after teen gunman Griffin J. John II fired his first shot outside Silver Rail Elementary School.
“Mom, there’s a shooter,” the boy told her, a terrifying message he confirmed in a text moments later, first scrambling to write “shroterr” before following up with, “shooter at school.”
“Baby I love you don’t call anyone please be as quiet as possible,” Michelle responded.
“If you can safely, text me, that’s OK just don’t make any calls. The police are going to help you. I love you so much. Do you know anything that’s going on?” she asked.
An hour later, she followed up with her son asking him questions, telling him “I love you so much” and continuing to comfort the youngster.
“Everything is going to be okay. This happened to me too, and I am okay,” she wrote to the boy, which was the first time she ever revealed to her kids the trauma she went through, she told CNN.
“I love you so much. It’s going to be okay,” Michelle wrote.
“They will load you on the bus and it will be kind of slow but we will get to you, I promise.”
Michelle was a freshman at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California, when senior Jason Anthony Hoffman opened fire in a March 2001 attack.
He wounded three students and two teachers, but fortunately no one was killed.
Michelle said she has continued to live with the trauma of the shooting — she suffers from panic attacks and always finds herself looking for the nearest exit in public spaces.
She even felt an anxious nagging feeling when her sons went to school every day.
“Every single time I dropped them off, and I would see them walk in the front doors, I would get a pit in my stomach thinking, ‘I hope I see him again,’” she told CNN through tears.
“It’s probably because of the trauma I went through.”
Michelle’s sons survived Thursday’s shooting, while four others were killed in the attack.
Three students — 5-year-old Rhoam Summer , an 8-year-old, and an 11-year-old — and teacher Megan Lambert, 25, were killed.
A hero teacher managed to wrestle John, 16, to the floor in the midst of his rampage until a student’s brave father, Kaylub Giamanco, stormed into the classroom and fatally shot the gunman.
Investigators are still probing a motive for John’s massacre, but law-enforcement sources say he went to extreme lengths to carry out the bloodshed .
John’s weapon had been legally purchased by his mother around the time of his August birthday, sources said.
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