Two mass shootings, six years apart

Two mass shootings on Valentine's Day, six years apart.

On Wednesday, the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl 58 victory parade was marred by a shooter who killed one person and injured at least 11 others, many of whom are children. The shooting happened the same day six years ago a former student opened fire at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others.

For a day meant to be about love, Feb. 14 is now a painful reminder for many Americans of those who were lost — and the fear they felt when something sacred, like attending school or attending a parade, turned deadly.

👋 Nicole Fallert here and welcome to Your Week, our newsletter exclusively for Paste BN subscribers (that's you!). This week, we talk with Paste BN Education Correspondent Alia Wang about a librarian at Marjorie Stoneman who survived the Parkland shooting. Librarian Diana Haneski shares how she moved forward from the pain, offering moving words that may be helpful for anyone hurting after this week's attack.

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How a librarian moved through the pain of surviving a shooting

It's everyone's worst nightmare: A place meant to be a source of joy and community turned deadly by the spray of bullets. It happened in Kansas City, Missouri, this week as celebrating fans quickly fled the scene of a Super Bowl victory parade for their lives. It also happened six years ago at Diana Haneski's workplace, a school in Parkland, Florida, where she is the librarian.

When it feels like shootings could happen anywhere in America, how can anyone feel safe? One of the keys to Haneski's survival was that she was prepared for the worst-case scenario. Her friend, Yvonne Cech, the former librarian at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of a 2012 shooting that killed 26 people, had given her life-saving advice in the case of a school shooting. While this might seem coincidental, the high instance of school shootings in the U.S. makes her words of warning rational.

Haneski knew from Cech to block the entrance before she hid with 54 others in a library storage room for more than two hours. She knew to wear clothes with pockets so she had her walkie-talkie, cellphone and keys handy. Inside the closet, Haneski remained frozen, moving little but her eyes as she tracked the shadows creeping in through the crack beneath the door. 

She told Paste BN's Alia Wong what happened that day and what her life has been like since. Even after the all-clear, Haneski remained frozen with grief and fear. She knew the victims. She had seen the shooter as a child. But she saw how the students of Parkland rallied around the need for better gun control and was inspired by their transformation of pain into activism. She told Wong she stayed at the school because of the students.

Now, Haneski is the winner of this year's national “I Love My Librarian” award for her public service, and she champions the healing power of libraries, even when these spaces come under attack — literally and metaphorically (check out Wong's deep-dive on book bans here).

While Kansas City reels with the aftermath of a mass shooting, and our country contemplates what the future is supposed to look like amid so many attacks, Haneski's story is one of strength after tragedy. Her resilience in the face of heartbreak to ensure students have a safe place to heal and grow can't change gun laws, but they can shape a community.

"When she saw (the students') bravery and how intent they were on not letting this go down in history in vain, it made her realize," Wong said of Diana's decision to stay employed at the school "Rather than run from the pain, her instinct is to go toward it."

Read more on guns in America from Paste BN:

• Can America's gun violence be kept out of everyday life?
• Here's the latest former President Donald Trump has said on gun rights.
• Gun shops that sell the most guns used in crime are revealed in new list.
• Opinion: Congress has ignored gun violence. I hope they can't ignore the voices of the victims.
• The Kansas City parade shooting shows gun violence danger lurks wherever people gather in U.S..

Thank you

Our journalists work tirelessly covering the country to shed light on these events. We couldn't be more thankful for your support which enables us to tell stories like Haneski's. Thank you for reading and we'll be back next week.

Best wishes, 

Nicole Fallert