This was already a tragedy of epic proportions (with the young kids involved, especially), but as with any story, seeing her Twitter feed and reading some of her hockey stuff brought me to an even greater level of personal connection and sadness.
She was actually from Texas and was pursuing her career in Colorado. Amazingly, she was nearly involved in the Eaton shopping mall shooting in Toronto not even two months ago. The idea that such an innocent person could be nearly caught up in a public shooting rampage (which are still extremely rare), blog about it, and then have it happen again not even two months later in a different country and thousands of miles away...it just blows my mind.
I heard something Chris Connely said about this generation of young people, 9/11, and other tragedies on the B.S. Report (Simmons podcast) that stuck with me. He talked about how a lot of people don't understand the obsession with social media and the need to constantly keep friends, family, and even total strangers "in the loop" about what you're doing at a given moment. And he wondered if it had anything to do with a generation whose formative years were marked by Columbine, 9/11, anthrax, and the War on Terror, and in the face of the constant thought their life could end without warning, young people "document" their own lives as a way of saying "I was here. I lived".
Who knows if there's any truth to that, but I'll say one thing, reading that girl's Twitter feed about how she could be tweeting about Shea Weber's contract and excited to see the opening of some movie only hours before her death...there has to be a lesson in there somewhere.
shes a pretty girl, doesnt make it any better or worse, but its just sad to see what the piece of s*** did to all those innocent people who had such a bright future. 70 wounded, 12 dead. good lord what the hell is wrong with some people.
A lot of her colleagues and other hockey people who interacted with her in her short lifetime were on Twitter this morning angry, distraught, and destroyed by this. By all accounts, she was an A+ person.
All the victims and their families are equally important, but there's always that "one" that seems to hook you. I virtually never cry because of things in the news, even ones as tragic as this one, but I remember watching a Columbine memorial, and the description of one of the victims sounded just like a high school age girl that I was friends with the time, and I just lost it. What a waste.
