On the Day of the Massey Shooting, I mourned twice / Summer Hendry
“Were you home on the 19th of June between 10.30 and 11.30am?” Asked the weary officer sitting at our dining room table. “Yes” I replied. It had been a tough day for him and looked to be a long night. I wished I could have been more helpful, had something more to contribute to his search.
Our house backs on to an empty lot, and across the lot, is the street where everything happened. Where a Police car tried to pull over a vehicle, where a pedestrian was hit, where officers were shot, where one died. But all I heard that day were endless sirens and my two-year-old son pointing out to me the constant buzz of a “heli-copper” through our firmly locked sliding door. We offered him condolences and thanked him as he sighed and left for the next house.
I mourned that day. Losing someone doing their job, just not coming home to family or friends, is devastating. A terrifying day for many who have loved ones in the Police force. Who hear the news updates, who wait, who pray through the long, long day, each hoping it won’t be their mother, father, sister or brother.
My husband isn’t a police officer, but he serves people who can be violent at times, who are sometimes caught with weapons, and I know that could be him, that could be us. I can’t imagine finding out one day that he just wasn’t coming home. That the worst had happened, and life would never be the same. It’s desperately sad and incredibly heart breaking. And I mourned with the grieving, unable to imagine their pain.
Later that night, as I finished brushing my teeth, I heard my husband’s voice around the corner, “They caught him. A 24-year-old will be charged in court tomorrow.” And I found the strangest thing happened in my head and in my heart. I mourned again. For a 24-year-old who did something stupid. Something horribly stupid. “That’s his whole life,” I cried.
I write this less than 24 hours after this all started, so I have very little details, but he couldn’t have been thinking straight. Nothing he had done or could be caught with could be as bad as what he did, it couldn’t be as bad as murder. It wasn’t logical. So why? Was he on something? Was he suicidal? What made him THAT scared, THAT desperate?
And I began to think about what will happen after this. How, policies, procedures and laws will be scrutinised to see if anything could help stop this sort of things from happening again. But I was struck by the thought that no law or policy could have saved the life of the police officer, and no amount of punishment of the young man who shot him will bring that person back.
But I think there is something that would have prevented this tragedy, something that could have been changed.
If a young man wasn’t so desperate.
I don’t know his story but I wondered… if he had grown up in a safe stable home, where there was no abuse of drugs or people, where he had enough to eat and slept in a warm safe room at night, if he had peers and mentors in life who were encouraging and empowering as he grew, if he was given the space to explore his aspirations, and when life through him a curve ball, he had people around him who genuinely loved and cared for him to help get him through.
If this was his reality, yesterday would have not been big news, there would have been no sirens ringing through my neighbourhood, no policeman at my dinner table, no officer dead.
Healthy people don’t shoot someone in desperation and if this had been his reality, there would not be a grieving family in shock, or a young man at the end of his life, heading to court.
If this had been his reality, today there would be just two people, waking up in the morning, looking forward to a day and to a life full of possibilities.
Summer Hendry