"Authorities found two victims near the school. Both are students and neither sustained life-threatening injuries. One of those was a 17-year-old young woman who was shot in the leg. The details of the other student's injuries have not yet been released. A 16-year-old young man was shot in the torso and was found on Dickinson Street SE. He was alert, talking and providing information to police on the scene. He is not a student at Hope Academy, police said. All three victims were taken to area hospitals and are expected to survive."*
This is another one of those times I shake my head and just kinda wonder what the f*ck is wrong with people these days. I mean, these are kids. A sixteen year old shot in the torso and a seventeen year old shot in the leg. It's just… *sigh*
It's weird. There's this movie idea I've been working on about what leads up to something such as a school shooting. I want it to be about the events and the emotions leading up to it, more of a character drama I guess. It will show how you can start off with a perfectly "normal" (whatever that means) person, but after certain events they start to change. People may notice there's something different, but they don't really go farther than that. They don't care.
I'm a tech junkie (you're probably gonna see a post in the coming week about Apple's event tomorrow), but sometimes I think that technology is really getting in the way of people really connecting to other people. A friend of mine said "People just don't care anymore, probably because we're all so into our technology that when we finally look up it's too late or not enough!" Go through the list of "friends" you have online, and take a note of how many people you would be able to spend time alone with, just you and them, and not have it be awkward. I'm not saying you have to be best friends, but how many times can you look at someone and not only realize there's something wrong, but then ask them what's bothering them.
I recently read an article online about a study done in Seattle. Here are some of the results:
"The rate of high school students who brought a weapon to school increased from 6 percent 8 percent. Depression was a growing problem for high school and middle school students. Twenty-two percent of high schoolers reported feeling depressed for more than two weeks in the last year. Twelve percent of high school students reported making a suicide plan -- up four percent since 2008."**
To me, this is something we as a people can work on. All we need to do is just try to pay more attention to the people around us. Do you think we can do that? I certainly hope so…
*http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/grand_rapids/shooting-near-hope-academy-in-gr
**http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-survey-results-show-more-teens-depressed-less-drug-alcohol-use-20110518,0,3233613.story
