Mourning After the Saugus High School Shooting

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/us/santa-clarita-shooting.html

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This dispatch comes from Jill, who reported from Santa Clarita:

The contours of the shooting that took place Thursday morning at Saugus High School were stomach-churningly familiar.

A 16-year-old opened fire on his schoolmates before turning the gun on himself. A 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy were killed. Three other students were wounded.

[Read the full story about what happened here.]

Talking to parents and students, what struck me was how prepared they seemed.

Everyone I spoke with said they never thought their laid-back suburb — with its quiet neighborhoods of ranch houses and its stucco strip malls — would be the site of a school shooting like the ones they’d seen so many times on the news.

But when it was, they were ready. Parents told me that the school’s alert systems worked properly and that they were regularly updated about the incident by text. Students said that they knew from drills to barricade themselves inside their classrooms, and that their teachers were capable leaders.

[Here’s a list of school shootings so far this year.]

They discussed the identity of the shooter on social media, one student told me, but encouraged one another to delete incorrect posts. (The suspect, who was said to be in grave condition, has not been identified by the authorities.)

“We weren’t saying, ‘Oh, we’re going to die,’” the student, Maxximus Almaraz, a 16-year-old junior, said. “We were like, ‘How crazy this is happening to us.’”

Later on Thursday, churches around the area opened their doors to anyone who wanted to mourn and grief counselors met with families.

The Rev. Christopher Montella of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, not far from the high school, said he and his colleagues quickly put together a service.

“We gather,” he told several dozen congregants spread throughout the pews, “because it’s through each other we find strength.”

Teenagers in sweatshirts and scrunchies bowed their heads. Their parents clutched them in hugs. Elders sang every word of a hymn that filled the sanctuary. A boy with floppy blond hair pulled his flannel shirt over his face as he cried.

“Peace be with you,” they told one another, their eyes welling.

“And also with you.”

A vigil was set for Sunday.

See coverage in The Los Angeles Times, The Santa Clarita Valley Signal, The Ventura County Star and more.

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Read the full story here.

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Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.