The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-29)

SUNDAY, MAY 29 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

Texas school shooting

Zoey knew all that, and much

more.

“First, he shot his father. Then

he came to the school ... and Miss

Fredericks, our, umm, what’s” —

she paused, looking at her grand-

mother, Sandra McAdams, for

help, until the word came to her

— “principal. She came on the

announcement saying to get in

the bathroom, and we got in the

bathroom. It was when I was in

4K.”

McAdams, who she called

“Nanny,” watched in silence, eyes

welling as she sat atop a “PAW

Patrol” comforter on the bottom

mattress of the bunk bed Zoey

shared with her younger brother.

“A nd our teachers told us to

be quiet,” Zoey continued, put-

ting an index finger over her

mouth. “A nd they w as both h old-

ing the door shut, but they had it

locked so nobody could break in.

And when it was over, we un-

locked the bathroom and we

her. Afterward, she hesitated to
connect with people. She had
lost the best friend she ever had.
Making new ones meant she
would only have somebody else
to lose.

A playground shooting’s pain

What makes America’s young-
est school shooting survivors the
most vulnerable to lasting trau-
ma is their view of the world
around them, said Bruce Perry, a
psychiatrist who has worked for
years with grieving families.
Most teenagers have grown to
accept that adults can’t always
protect them, a reality that many
elementary-schoolers don’t un-
derstand.
“In general, the more a trau-
matic experience shatters your
world view,” Perry said, “the
harder it is to recover.”
Zoey Hall was only 4 years old
on the afternoon that a shooter
came to her school on Sept. 28,
2016, and she remembers almost
everything about it, even though
the people who love her wish she
didn’t.
The memories might have fad-
ed by now if Zoey hadn’t refused
to let them go. It was the worst
day of her life, but it was also the
last one she spent with her
6-year-old brother, Jacob. The
last day she called him “Bubba”
and he called her “Sissy.” The last
day he held her hand and walked
her into Townville Elementary.
Mostly, though, there are the
bad memories, the ones that
come back — as they did again
this past week — when she hears
that what happened to Jacob in
rural South Carolina has hap-
pened again to other kids in

some other place.

“I felt sad and scared, at the

same time,” Zoey, now 9, said of

her reaction to the news she’d

heard about Uvalde. She under-

stood what some of those chil-

dren had endured, because Zoey

had endured it, too. Once, when

she was just 6, she sat on the

bedroom floor at her grandpar-

ents’ house and explained, in

striking detail, her memories of

losing her brother.

She took out her tablet and

pointed at a photo she’d found

online of the 14-year-old shooter,

who by then had received a life

sentence for murdering Jacob.

went out the back door. ... I saw

Nanny, and she picked me up

and said, ‘Where’s Jacob?

Where’s Jacob?’ And then they

said he had been flew into

Greenville Memorial Hospital,

and they did all they could to

keep him alive. He lost so much

blood. And they shot him right

RAINIER EHRHARDT/ANDRESON, S.C., INDEPENDENT MAIL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

JOHN WOODROW COX/THE WASHINGTON POST

KERRY BURRISS

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Dale Hall at the funeral for his brother

Jacob, a 6-year-old who was shot and killed at his school in 2016 in

Townville, S.C. Ava Olsen was on the playground with Jacob during

the shooting but managed to escape. Zoey Hall, right, and her

brother Spencer comfort their grandmother, Sandra McAdams, in

2018. Jacob Hall holds flowers i n an undated photo.

there,” Zoey said, pointing to her

right leg.

Zoey had thought about what

caused it all, too, and she an-

nounced what she thought the

country should do about it.

“I think all the guns should be

in the trash can where nobody

could buy them guns, where they

won’t shoot people,” she said.

“Because guns are not good for

people.”

Ava Olsen thought the same

thing. She adored Jacob, the

smallest child in their first-grade

class. He would hold her hand by

the swings when no one was

looking. She called him “Jakey”

and imagined they would get

married one day. He was the only

boy she’d ever kissed.

Ava had been out on the

playground with him that day,

but she’d escaped. Distraught,

she wrote letters in 2018 to

elected leaders — including Pres-

ident Donald Trump and her

state’s Republican senator Lind-

sey O. Graham — explaining

what she’d witnessed and plead-

ing with them to do something

about it.

They didn’t, and eventually

she stopped sending her letters.

Ava, who’d run away when the

shooting started, suffered from

crippling post-traumatic stress

in its aftermath. She was pre-

scribed antipsychotics and anti-

depressants and began hitting

herself and yanking out her eye-

lashes. Her parents withdrew h er

from school.

Ava is 12 now and doing better.

She has started playing basket-

ball and soccer, activities in

crowded, noisy places that would

have overwhelmed her with

anxiety five years ago.

What she still cannot bear, and

what her parents try hard to hide

from her, is the news of other

school shootings.

On Tuesday evening, she was

sitting on her living room couch,

watching funny cat videos on

TikTok. Then a different kind of

video popped up. It showed that

more than a dozen children had

been shot dead at an elementary

school in Texas.

She started screaming, and

her mother rushed into the

room.

“Why?” Ava cried. “Why?”

Joanna Slater, Razzan Nakhlawi,

Meryl Kornfield and Ian Shapira

contributed to this report.

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