DENVER — State Representative Tom Sullivan was more than 2,000 miles away from the parents he saw on his television screen Thursday, but there was a shared sense of grief that began with a high-powered firearm and ended with a jury decision.
In a Ft. Lauderdale courtroom, a divided jury spared a Parkland, Florida, school shooter from the death penalty, and instead recommended the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The shooter plead guilty last year to the premeditated 2018 murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Sullivan, who lost his son, Alex, in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting, said he watched most of Thursday's court proceedings, recalling similarities when jurors decided the fate of that shooter.
"I just watched this, and I'm remembering, you know, what it was and all of that," he said.
Sullivan went on to become a state representative and is running to become a senator. Part of his platform is gun violence prevention.
"[Alex] knows how hard I'm working for him," Sullivan said as his eyes watered.
His emotions on Thursday though, as he describes them, are far removed from the political sphere and closer to the stages of grief.
"I mean, I thought I knew grief and loss. My father passed away... my grandparents, and you think you understand what it's like," Sullivan said. "But when it's a child? No, it's completely different. It's every single day. And then to know that there are so many others who are in the same, you know, have the same experience."
Several parents of Marjory Stoneman students who were killed in the shooting publicly shared their disapproval of the jury's decision.
"I'm disgusted," one parent said.
Sullivan is dissatisfied with the outcome, too.
"I mean, there is no, you know, there's no coming back from that," he said. "There are people who really have made the decision that they don't want to live amongst us. And so, we should say, 'Okay, well then you're not.'"
The Aurora theater shooter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015 after jurors failed to reach an unanimous decision about the death penalty.
"I was certainly in favor of the death penalty. There were some who were against it," Sullivan said.
Similarly, some loved ones connected to the Parkland tragedy have expressed their disapproval of the death penalty.
Even when there is a divided courtroom, Sullivan said a shared sense of grief always takes precedent.
"I'm not afraid. I'm not embarrassed to tell people how much I love [Alex], and that’s all I can do." Sullivan said, holding back tears.