Arizona Shooting Claims Life Of 9-Year-Old Born On 9/11

Yefim Toybin
Phoenix, Arizona
January 9, 2011 @ 16:01

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head Saturday when an assailant opened fire outside a grocery store during a meeting with constituents, killing six people, including a 9-year-old child, a federal judge, and wounding 13 others.

I want to take this opportunity and express my sincere and deepest condolences to the families of the victims’ of a brutal mass killing in Tucson yesterday. All the victims of this massacre were innocent people, whose the only one gilt was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Among all the victims was a little girl who had just begun her life journey. I keep all the victims in my thoughts, especially a little girl, who was even born on 9/11 and had just started her life journey. It is twice painful to find out that a kid’s life can be ended up this way.

I also wish that all!!! the wounded ones, including the U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, will have a successful and quick recovery.

The worst part of this shooting rampage is that we can not return those who have been murdered. It has already happened, we all need not just to learn a lesson that violence takes people’s life away but doesn’t solve the problem. It would be very productive and effective to try to analyze why this type of incidents takes place and how they can be prevented from happening.

Jared Lee Loughner, a suspect in the case, is in custody now. My question is, could have this horrible crime been prevented? It’s not an easy question to answer. There had been several early warning signs of inadequate and violent behavior of the suspect. I am school teacher and when I determine those singes to the best of my abilities, I take them seriously and make parents and appropriate authorities aware of it. However, quite often you hear that they are kids and what they do is not serious. Then, we have a tragedy like this.

I had a student last year who wore instead of his school ID a colorful picture of AK 47. In addition, he had some inappropriate scripts on the back and/or front of his T-shirts. To me it was a warning sign and I raised a red flag. When sharing my serious concerns with his parent, I was told that I just simply don’t like the child because I was the only to pay attention to insignificant things. Of course, I also had a discussion with the student, wrote a referral and turned it in.

I hope that this young person at the age of 22 won’t do the same things.
Jared Lee Loughner had posted on-line a picture of a hand gun sitting on the top of the US history book. Was it an early warning sign?
God bless the USA and it’s people.