Striking close to home...literally

So...I said I was going to keep up with this blog better. I guess I'm not being too successful.

On December 5th, 2007, a 19-year-old decided to enter the Westroads Mall in Omaha and kill eight innocent people just because he was depressed, for whatever reason. Having had lived in Omaha for eight years, that hit close to home. That entrance of the Von Maur they kept showing on television? That's the entrance I tried to use everytime I went to Westroads. (The parking lot nearby is usually fairly empty, and close to the doors) I had been inside the store just 2 1/2 weeks before. The main thing I was worrying about when I was there was that I wanted to get home safely with some iffy weather coming in. Many times at my previous job I would spend my lunch by going to Westroads and just walk around and window shop. What if I had been there that day? I was back at Westroads the day it was first opened after the shootings. I have not been back to Von Maur yet. I do plan on doing that within the next week or so. Probably going to buy a shirt for my niece for her birthday I saw that day I was there in November. I don't know how I'm going to feel...I know it's going to be weird. I know that if I do buy that shirt, I'm going to have to go up to the third floor where the gunman was. We'll see.

Now, another mall shooting. This one took place at a Lane Bryant. When I saw the news on Sunday morning, and they said Chicago, Illinois, I was almost 100% positive that it wasn't Chicago proper. When things happen in the suburbs of major cities, they just name the major city. They showed a clip of the police chief holding a press conference. The patch on his sleeve said Tinley Park Police Department. Tinley Park....the town not two miles east of my hometown. What in the world? It's a terrible thing to think, but it appears that mall shootings are going to be the new "thing". In the late 90's, it was school shootings, basically culminating in the shootings at Columbine in Colorado. Let's hope this type of violence ceases very very soon. And...I am certainly not wanting anything else to happen that somehow I'm connected to it.