I came back on our road trip on Saturday the 8th a few hours before the shooting happened. We drove through the same intersection that Gabrielle Giffords would later be meeting with people but crashed into three separate comas once we got home. When we finally woke up, I checked my phone and saw that I had gotten a text from my friend Becca saying “CNN reports: Giffords confirmed dead.” Right away, I went into the family room and saw my parents watching the news breaking story. Sure enough, the media distorted and tainted the news with false facts and infuriated the whole city. As developments finally came through the biased and inaccurate reports of the media, we learned the identity of the killer and it shamed the whole city that one of our own would do something so horrible. To aggregate the matter, an NBC reporter claimed that “Tucson doesn’t really have a sense of community, so the mourning shouldn’t be that difficult on the city”. I won’t even get into what the Tucson residents did after this was announced, but rest assured, city limits are still in use and yes, some people are not allowed inside them.

It was hard coming back here to Embry-Riddle because I know how my city is suffering and I wish I could have gone to the memorial services and prayer sessions that were going on when I was gone. I talked to some of the others from Tucson who have to be here and we all agreed that we’d rather be in Tucson to hear the President’s memorial speech and with our families during these tough times. I looked through some of the back pictures that my friends took during break and realized that we have to move on with these people in our hearts and minds so that we can prevent another tragedy. I had some fun times during break and that happened on that Saturday was not the best way to finish off the break. Despite this, I had some great times with my friends, including going to Winterhaven, the hilarious road trip, and New Years! I’ll put some pictures up so that we can look at something besides that creepy mug shot of the killer that’s been posted all over the news.

This creepy skull that Kara and I found

Our group!