NAU shooting: A neighborhood kid sees hope, tempered by a bullet

I’ve known Luc since he was 7 when his family moved in across the street and two houses down. He walked my son, Sawyer, two years younger, to his classroom on his first day of kindergarten and then waited for him after school.

They grew up together, swimming and building forts out of scraps of wood. People often mistook them for brothers.

Luc is 18 now, 6-foot-2, and just weeks into his first semester at Northern Arizona University.

“Hey!” I said, shutting off the weed whacker. “How’s college?”

“College is the greatest place in the world!” he said, with such enthusiasm that I laughed out loud. “I love it!” 

Well, you had better come in and tell us all about it, I told him. I called to Sawyer, who is studying for the PSAT and thinking about where he wants to go to college.

Luc loves the freedom to come and go as he pleases and living on his own – well, with a roommate, but he’s cool. They both like the cold so they sleep with the windows open, and people play soccer in the hallway.

The professors are cool, the classes much more interesting than in high school, and the homework manageable.

The campus is beautiful and green. He goes camping on the weekends. There are pretty girls everywhere.

“Dude, that sounds amazing,” Sawyer said.

A few days later, when someone asked Sawyer where he wanted to go to college, he immediately responded, “NAU.”

So Luc was my first thought Friday morning when I saw the news at 6 a.m. There had been a shooting at NAU.

I called his mom, Kat. She hung up quickly to call Luc.

Sawyer was getting ready for school. He kept glancing at the TV news. I turned up the volume so he could hear it from the bathroom.

The details were trickling in. At about 1:20 a.m., during an altercation between two groups of students, four people were shot, one fatally. A suspect was in custody.

My friend Rhonda texted to say Jenny was worried – she couldn’t reach her daughter, a freshman at NAU. Tell her all the victims are male, I texted back.

But both of Carrie’s boys are there, too, Cort, a freshman, and Shawn, a senior.

Carrie texted to say she had received a text at 2:37 a.m. from another mom saying there had been a shooting. She had immediately texted her boys. And then she waited.

Just last weekend at Family Weekend on the Flagstaff campus, another mom had asked Carrie if she had heard about the gunman who had killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore.

“Never in a million years would I have thought it would truly happen at my kids’ school,” Carrie said.

We waited to hear back about Luc.

Shawn, who’s 21, texted back 10 minutes later to say he was safe in his apartment.

Another 20 minutes later, Cort, 18, texted, “I’m sleeping, Mom. I’m OK.”

“I’m OK.” 

They are beautiful words to a parent.

We spend our kids’ entire lives trying to make sure they are OK.

We do whatever we can to keep them safe. We cover electrical sockets with plastic covers and put up fences around our pools. We strap them into car safety seats, shin guards and bicycle helmets.

And then we drill them about how to stay safe. Don’t run with sticks. Look both ways before you cross the street. Buckle up. Never give out your password.

But school was always safe. We might worry about our kids on their way to and from school, but we didn’t worry once they were there, save the occasional elementary-school playground tumble, or middle-school broken heart.

Logically, every parent knows the chances of a shooting at a child’s school are almost infinitely slim. But it doesn’t feel that way when there are so many shootings - and one this close.

As I texted back and forth with my friends, I wavered between being teary-eyed and wanting to punch something.

I was sad, and I was angry.

But I was something else, too.

Sad that another child was dead, Yes, a child because even at 18, they’re still kids to me, just getting started.

Angry at the kid police say had the gun, that he even thought to bring it to college when he should have been bringing his new sheets and semester’s worth of toiletries, that he brought it to a beautiful campus where people play soccer in the hallway and there are pretty girls everywhere.

An encounter between two groups of young men might have escalated into an old-fashioned fist fight, but not a shooting.

How could anything they were fighting about be worth that?

The something else I’m feeling, I’m not sure I have the exact right words for it, but it feels like defeat.

Because I don’t believe anymore that anything will change, no matter how many kids get shot at school.

Because nothing changed after Sandy Hook, the Connecticut school where 20 tiny children were slaughtered. After that, I can’t even imagine a scenario that would incite change – or maybe I just don’t want to.

Each time there’s a shooting at a school, we offer our prayers and thoughts. Obviously, they are not enough.

Because Friday we woke up to one dead 18-year-old freshman and three more students injured. Before lunchtime, there was another shooting near a student housing complex near Texas Southern University that left one dead and one wounded.

Instead, it feels as if we're learning to live with this. That we will send our kids to elementary schools, and high schools, and community colleges and universities, knowing this is a possibility.

We will add “what to do in the event of a shooting” to our parenting.

But really, it will all be out of our control.

We won’t be able to keep our kids safe, even when they are great big boys away at college. It will come down to tragic random chance. Accepting that feels like defeat.

Just before 7 a.m., Kat texted to say Luc was OK.

I read the message aloud to Sawyer.

By 7:20, we were out the door to take Sawyer to school, just like every other ordinary Friday. Soon after, I was logged on and working. Like every other time that something like this happens, we went back to what we always do. And it was routine.

Later, during his break between chemistry and his chemistry lab, I texted Luc.

He’s not worried about his safety – though he is worried, he said, about how these shootings seem to keep happening and about society's growing fascination with violence.

“I still love it here,” he told me. The people at his school are pulling together. He feels like everything is going to be OK.

It made me glad, to remember that college can be the greatest place in the world. That there’s enthusiasm for a life filled with green spaces and soccer games, interesting classes and pretty girls, that the future can still look amazing.

Even on days when I’m less sure. 

Reach Bland at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8614. Read her blog. 

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