I am a survivor of the Mattoon High School shooting of 2017. The shooter is finally in prison, and some local people seem shocked that we survivors are glad. They seem to disregard this shooting because one boy was “merely” wounded and barely escaped being killed. Their abhorrently ignorant dismissal of what we went through is appalling.
They love their guns so much that they’re willing to disregard that more than 900 kids had to run for their lives — lives that were nearly taken. Some ran without even their own clothes on; they had changed for P.E. and left everything behind.
They blame the staff for the shooter’s problems, which is another boldfaced lie. I know those people and am proud to have been educated by them. One of them was the SOLE reason we survived that day. To Angie MacQueen, thank you. Words can’t express how grateful we are.
Perhaps it’s easy for people who haven’t stepped foot in a school in 20+ years to say these things, or people who weren’t there or didn’t have kids there. But for most of our community, we had something taken away from us that day. We say good riddance.