By Sean O’Brien
Contributing Writer
Last week, a new Pope was elected approximately 4,500 miles away.
On the same day, a man named Kurt Myers burned down his apartment, shot and killed four people, injured two more and killed an FBI dog approximately 120 miles away from our campus. I would know, because my hometown, Ilion, is adjacent to Mohawk, N.Y., and Mohawk is where this all took place.
I spent that Wednesday afternoon fearing for my family’s safety.
For hours, I was glued to the online stream of my hometown’s local news station, grinding my teeth as they showed coverage of a building half a world away. When more news finally broke, it consisted of sympathy for the victims of the tragedy with minimal political talk.
That isn’t my issue with the coverage.
My issue lies with who exactly constitutes a victim. Obviously, the families of those lost and wounded are suffering, and I would never wish to draw attention away from them. But what about the rest of the community?
What about those who had nothing to do with this situation? The other families whose hometown, their safe zone, if you will, has been violated? I, for one, will be terrified going home. I can’t imagine how Kurt Myers’ neighbors feel right now.
I’m terrified, and I wasn’t even there.
According to the assorted local news sources in the area, the events proceeded as follows:
Myers’ first target after burning his own house down was tiny little John’s Barber Shop. I’ve seen that barbershop for years. I saw it every single time I went to my pediatrician’s office next door. Two people died there, and two more escaped severely injured.
His next stop was about a mile down the road in the neighboring town of Herkimer. He stopped at a car service garage, Gaffey’s Fast Lube, and took the lives of two more people. Gaffey’s is about a block away from the new location of Bailey’s Karate School, the karate school my family is involved in.
After that, he drove two minutes away, four if you hit the lights wrong—to the street that the aforementioned karate school used to inhabit. He ditched his vehicle and hid out overnight in an abandoned bar, formerly known as Glory Days. He then died in a gunfight with the police the following morning, but not before gunning down a two-year-old FBI dog named Ape.
I have vivid memories of each of these locations. They were in my safe place. They were a part, however small a part they may have been, of home.
When Kurt Myers fired his shotgun, he didn’t just take the lives of those within his range. He took the sense of small-town security away from a neighborhood that had never dreamed of such a thing happening to them. Myers didn’t just kill four people and a dog; Myers killed a little bit of home for so many people.
On the morning of Wednesday, March 13 at 9:30, my hometown was spoiled by the senseless violence of one man with a shotgun.
On the same morning, I was sitting in Religious Texts, unaware that my world was being ripped out from under my feet as an old man burned down his apartment.
