I play a game with my students when we learn about paying attention to details. As a writer, it is imperative to get these details correct. When telling a story and a character gets shot, the description of that event has to be researched in order to create a real connection with readers. For example, I can't say "the gunman looked me in the face as he pulled the trigger of his AR-15, but I shielded myself with the book in my hands." For readers, alarm bells begin ringing. How can you shield yourself from a bullet that literally pulverizes organs with a simple book? (More on this in tomorrow's post). Needless to say, details matter. Details are the difference from a story being completely plausible to it being mere fiction.
As a citizen, paying attention to details has quickly become the difference between guilt and innocence- life or death. In the world of Snapchat and Instagram, it is easy to stop paying close attention to details. Here is the question for this first episode. Who do we believe regarding the description of the shooter? In addition to this question, is it plausible there is more than one shooter? And, even crazier, could this be a manufactured event mixing a real-life shooting with the planned Code Red drill?
I know these questions and many more are surfacing and making us all realize how much this situation stinks. Over the next week, we will explore questions related to this tragic event. The overarching question is- what do the people on Olympus want from us- what do they want to take away?
Here is a link to the police radio conversations occurring the day of the shooting.
What is the actual description of the shooter? According to the newly released police radio footage, the shooter had on a hoodie at the beginning of the transmission. Then, it is confirmed he has on a JROTC uniform- black pants and burgundy shirt. This is the outfit Nikolas Cruz had on when arrested.
However, here are examples of people directly contradicting this description. We have the most common video from the creative writing teacher, Stacey Lippel describing the shooter in this manner. The shooter was roughly 20 feet away from her, "why is the police here?" She continues, "he is in full metal garb: helmet, face mask, bulletproof armor."
This completely contradicts the image of the shooter, who seemed to be in a different part of the building. It appears there are more people with similar descriptions as Mrs. Lippel. Here is another teacher, Ernest Rospierski, describing the shooter.
Based on these descriptions, we must conclude that there is more than one shooter. Unless Cruz stashed extra supplies at the school, there is no way he would have room for all of these items in his "guitar case." With that being said, we have more pressing questions to look into. Tomorrow's episode, TV versus Reality. What do the balistics say?