Over the weekend there were three tragedies. First at Brown University on Friday. Then the deadly shooting in Australia. Then the deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife that was discovered Sunday afternoon.
These kinds of horrific things always hit me hard. There is an ache in my heart and a pain in my gut, and I don’t know whether to scream or to cry, or both. It is so hard to wrap my head around the idea that killing someone is the answer to anything. That has been stated so many times on my blog, and I keep hoping, and praying, and hoping and praying that the attacks will stop.
Then I wake up to news that breaks my heart all over again.
Now some details on all three that I found in various news sources this morning.
The Shooting At Brown University in Rhode Island.
At least two students were killed when a person entered a lecture hall at the university and started shooting with a rifle on Saturday afternoon. Another nine students were wounded, with one in critical condition at a hospital.
The dead, both Brown students, were identified as Ella Cook, a parishioner at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, a recent graduate of Midlothian High School in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
Two of the survivors were survivors of previous high school shootings. Mia Tretta, a junior at Brown, was a survivor of the 2019 mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, where she was shot in the stomach and her best friend was killed. She has since become an advocate for gun violence prevention.
Zoe Weissman, a sophomore, was a student at Westglades Middle School, which is adjacent to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, during the 2018 shooting that left 17 people dead. She is also a gun control activist and previously served as president of a local chapter of March for Our Lives.
Almost 30 hours after the deadly shooting the authorities in Rhode Island said Sunday night that they were still searching for the gunman and that they would release a person of interest who had been detained earlier. As of Monday morning, the search continues.
Information taken from The New York Times
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Now Down Under
At least 15 people have been killed and 27 are in hospitals after a shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach yesterday. The attack, declared a terrorist incident, targeted Jewish Australians and is the country’s worst mass shooting in almost 30 years.
The victims: Those killed were aged between 10 and 87. A Holocaust survivor, as well as two rabbis are among the victims. A “heroic” bystander who wrestled the gun from one attacker is recovering in the hospital.
The suspects are a father-son duo, identified as 50-year-old Sajid Akram, who moved to the country in 1998 and was killed at the scene, and 24-year-old Naveed Akram, who was born in Australia and is in custody. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said they were “driven” by extreme ideology, and were interviewed by security services in 2019 but “weren’t part of a wider cell.”
People had gathered at the beach for a celebration of Hanukah, with a special emphasis on fun and games, good food and fellowship, especially for children.
What a horrible way to end the day.
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Then there’s the death of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle, who were killed in their Brentwood, CA home this weekend. Their bodies were discovered Sunday afternoon.
Their son, Nick, was taken into custody Sunday evening, with bail set at $4 million. As of this writing, no other details have been released.
“It is with profound sorrow that we announce the tragic passing of Michele and Rob Reiner,” a Reiner family spokesperson said in a statement shared with Variety and the Los Angeles Times. “We are heartbroken by this sudden loss, and we ask for privacy during this unbelievably difficult time.”
Rob Reiner was born in the Bronx in 1947 to a show business family. He said his number one inspiration was his father, Carl Reiner, a comedy genius, from the early days of television. In the 1950s, the elder Reiner worked with Sid Caeser, Mel Brooks, and Neil Simon. In the 1960s, he created The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Rob Reiner often spoke about how much he loved what his father did; he even told Fresh Air in September the story about how he wanted to change his name to Carl.
For more details on the news, and Rob Reiner’s incredible career, check out the complete story on NPR News.
My first introduction to the talent of Rob Reiner was the TV show All In The Family, where he was the liberal foil to Archie Bunker’s conservative racism. The “Meathead” as his character was called by Archie, had ideals of justice and equality that I saw sustained in Reiner the man as he went on to direct such classics as Princess Bride and Spinal Tap. He also maintained his clever sense of humor as showcased so well in those films, as well as Princess Bride.
How many times my family has played with lines from that movie:
“Have fun storming the castle.”
“Do you think it will work?”
“It’ll take a miracle.”
Once when I was being taken back to surgery for a procedure, my daughter said the first line, and I responded with the second, and the nurses wheeling my bed filled in the third, and then the fourth. “We’ve got three of these.”
That bit of levity was such a great experience, and I thank Mr. Reiner for giving us those memorable lines, as well as all the wonderful stories throughout his career.
May he rest in peace.
And may there someday be an end to senseless violence.
Hugs to you!!!! Feeling the loss too, then some butthead tweets something stupid…aye corumba!!
Thanks, Sue. I saw the butthead tweet after I wrote this blog post. Shared a post from The Country Pastor on my FB page today that you might like. Really calls out the butthead. Here’s one line from his FB post, “When leaders lose humility and truth, they turn to control, accusation, and illusion, and the people suffer.”
There is nothing positive I can say about these incidents. I wish there was! I wish I could say these deaths—these murders and killings—served a greater purpose the benefited mankind. But I can’t say that, because it just wouldn’t be true. These deaths occurred because the intrisnic value of a human life is absent in modern society. I don’t know whether we can blame these views on a mindset of violent video games, or rather the global leadership who care more about themselves than other people. I guess it doesn’t really matter. What happened actually happened. I can’t actually decide on a global cure for this mindset, but I feel safe in saying a radical change in our current government administration would be a marvelous start to changing global ideals. Just my opinion, of course.
There are a myriad of reasons there is so much violence and people killing each other. I found that to be true when I wrote the books about school violence back in the early 90s.
What has changed dramatically in the last 20 0r 30 years is the erosion of moral fiber in society. If our consciences didn’t convince us not to do something, there were always societal norms that helped keep us in check. Those are gone. It’s like a free for all out there.
And I totally agree that a change in our government would be a good start. Words matter and so many of the words coming from the top are so hateful and seem to encourage the worst of humanity to rise to the surface.
We also need people in Congress who are willing to enact gun laws. The one enacted during Clinton’s terms reduced gun deaths significantly. A 2019 DiMaggio et al. study looked at mass shooting data for 1981 to 2017 and found that mass-shooting fatalities were 70% less likely to occur during the 1994 to 2004 federal ban on assault weapons.
When the ban was lifted the number of deaths increased dramatically.