One year after shooting a school in Florida: Nearly 1,200 people died from a firearm

Written by Adeel Hbadan

Fourteen students died in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018, in inspiring demonstrations, new laws, and widespread calls to end the attack caused by gun death. But in the year that has pbaded since one of the worst shootings in a US school, nearly 1,200 other children have lost their lives in that country.

The number alone could stop most people in their footsteps. But the editors of The Trace, a nonprofit news organization that reports on gun violence, wanted to remember the dead, not in the form of statistics, but as human beings endowed with a rich history. This week, they launched "Since Parkland", a website compiling the profiles of each of the victims. To tell their stories, The Trace spoke to those who could get closer to the victims: other young people.

This is how Mary Claire Molloy, 18, attempted to summarize the life of a 9-month-old boy, Jason Garcia Perez, who, along with two of his siblings, was shot dead in August in Clearlake, California, by his father, who then fired a shot and killed himself.

Molloy, an Indianapolis high school student, turned to development to try to recreate Jason's life, crawling and learning to speak. She was one of 200 teenagers writing the profiles.

"It's the most haunting and the most powerful thing I've ever done," she said. "I am a ship for the stories of these children that they can never tell. How can I be their voice? "

Molloy wrote 48 profiles; The youngest victim she talked about was Jason and the eldest was Alaina Maria Housley, who died when an armed man opened fire in a bar in Thousand Oaks, California.

The Trace has been working on "Since Parkland" with Gun Violence Archive, The Miami Herald, and the McClatchy Newspaper Group, whose member newsrooms will publish some of the profiles this week and over the weekend.

Most of their reports were given to the young reporters, but some felt a special affinity for some victims and asked to write about them. Some anniversaries shared with the dead. Akoto Ofori-Atta, who led the project and is the editor of The Trace, also asked another journalist to write about a person killed in a shootout after killing one of his comrades.

"We thought we'd write obituaries for kids, and teen journalists should do it because that's their story to tell," she said of the 100-word vignettes. "They are short and poetic. You will not learn about the name before the end. "

The circumstances of their death were also recorded for last. "Doing this job does not just mean reporting death," said Ofori-Atta.

The youth of the reporters was an advantage, said Melat Eskender, 17, a high school in Columbus, Ohio. "It was not intimidating for them to talk about their child to a young person," she said of the victims' parents.

Eskender, who has written or contributed to about 20 profiles, said that she had been very moved by the story of the youngest victim to whom she had been badigned, David Lee Anderson, 11, of D & # 39; East Chicago, Indiana. He had been caught in the crossfire while playing basketball.

"He played every day and ended up shooting himself in the head on the morning of Mother's Day," said Eskender, who interviewed David's devastated mother. "It was supposed to be a day of celebration of his relationship with his son."

Students and editors said the victims were mostly African Americans or Latin Americans and many of their deaths had not been announced.

"What struck me was that I did not even know it had happened," said Molloy, who was badigned to a victim living near her in Indianapolis, a one-year-old girl.

New profiles have been added this week and the work is not over. They count each death until Wednesday night at midnight.

"Unfortunately, we know that there will be a young person alive and will not be alive at the end of the day," said Ofori-Atta.