What do you say when something like this happens?
My wife texted me shortly after 2pm today, telling me there had been a shooting at Westroads. My immediate thought was that it was some dispute gone bad. It wasn’t until going online that I started getting a hint of how big it was.
Omaha.com, the World-Herald’s website, once again failed the test of being able to handle visitors when people actually need information, but fortunately Omaha’s television stations were able to come through with regular updates. On KETV.com, I watched as each refresh on the web browser seemed to yield more details and more victims. First it was two injured, then four, then five injured, then one dead, then perhaps three, and then all of a sudden it was nine.
It took me so long for it to actually click ‚Äî that this was entirely random and in the middle of a store we probably visit an average of once a week ‚Äî that it didn’t even occur to me to check on my family here in town until after a friend in Little Rock checked on me!
We ended up one of the lucky families, with everyone accounted for on my wife’s side and mine. I can’t imagine what it must be like for the families who still haven’t heard from someone; for the people who recognize one of the handful of cars still parked in that barren Westroads parking lot.