DENVER – School shootings have become a far too common occurrence. Those who have experienced them first hand say they never become easy to watch.
“Certain things can be different triggers for everybody,” Columbine survivor Missy Mendo told Anne Trujillo on this week’s Politics Unplugged. “For myself, the Florida shooting this past week, seeing the students with their hands above their heads and running kinda triggered for me, so I backed away. I started watching the Olympics.”
“I think I watch some of it, I can’t dwell on it too much,” added Craig Scott, who not only came face-to-face with the Columbine shooters in the library that day but lost his sister in the shooting. "It can be heavy. It can take you back into re-traumatizing yourself if you stay there too long.”
The survivors were asked what they thought people should be talking about after the shootings.
“My conversation immediately goes to the survivors,” said Missy. “My concern to them is it’s happened to them now. What can we do for them long-term because a lot of these incidents people come to help, they rush in, they’re there and everything is great and sadly it is that way until the next incident and then everything goes somewhere else.”
“For me I want to be focused on solutions,” added Craig. “I want to be focused on how, what we can do to make our culture better.”
Politics Unplugged airs Sundays at 4:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Denver7.