Sandy Hook anniversary: 4 elementary school shooting survivors share stories

Shannon Hill, Oakland Elementary

Hill, 40, was in first grade in 1988 when a 19-year-old walked into her school in Greenwood, S.C., and opened fire. Two 8-year-old girls were killed, and several other children and adults were wounded. The shooter was sentenced to death.

In 2018, a lot of churches started having active-shooter trainings. My daughter worked in a church at the time, and I didn’t want her to go through something like that alone.

I felt like I was pretty good at keeping my feelings kind of at bay. The [South Carolina Law Enforcement] agent who was doing the training apparently picked up on some stuff. After it was over, he said: “Well, I can tell this is very personal for you. You were at Oakland, weren’t you?”

I kind of teared up a little bit. And he said: “I just want to let you know that you’re normal, and everything that you are feeling is normal. And everything that you have felt is normal.” And I just let it all out right there and cried.

I had never been told that before. I cannot describe the feeling you get whenever somebody tells you that, when you think you’re the only person who suffers from something.

I knew I wanted everybody else at Oakland to have that feeling.

I looked on social media to try and find my first-grade teacher. Once I reached out to her, there was another classmate that I was friends with. She was glad I reached out to her. I asked them what they thought about starting a support group on social media, and they thought it was a great idea.

I used my yearbook to go through each person and look them up on Facebook.

I just wondered: Did it upset other people as much as it upset me? Did other people think about it like I thought about it?

I had never processed it as a kid, and I needed to.

I was in the cafeteria. We had just sat down to have lunch. A man came into the door that was closest to our table. We’d only been in school for like six weeks, but it wasn’t uncommon for them to have people come in. We had an open-door policy.

So he holds up a gun. And at first, I thought it was a water gun. That’s what a lot of kids have said they thought, that it was just a toy. He started shooting.

It wasn’t until my teacher stood up that I realized that something was wrong. I was sitting right by her. She was shot the first time, and when she turned, he shot her again. Then there were three classmates that were shot. I didn’t know that at the time. But I knew that my teacher had been shot. I went under the table and hid. There was an adult who pulled me out. I don’t know who it was.

This happened on a Monday. We were back at school on Thursday. That’s crazy to even think about right now.

The day that we returned, the teachers talked to students. I remember sitting on the floor in a circle. We talked about our feelings. No one really remembers them bringing in counselors.

They put tennis balls on the chairs so that whenever you slid the chairs, they didn’t make loud noise. There were holes in the wall, where he had shot. They had someone come in and paint a mural. It said “Oakland.” It was really big bubble letters.

They created a memorial garden at the school. They had a couple of plaques that were donated and a little statue with the girls’ names on it.

Apparently — and I think this is still common now — there was a thought that if you can just move past traumatic events that happen, then it isn’t an issue for you anymore.

I thought about it, not like obsessively thought about it, but it was there. And whenever there was a shooting, I would be extremely upset.

I knew that other people didn’t talk about it either. People are thinking the same stuff that I am. People are struggling with it.

This whole time, it’s like we’ve all been waiting on permission to talk about it. And now we have permission to talk about it. We have close to 200 people in the group now.

A lot of us over-plan. It’s apparently very common for people who have gone through traumatic events to try to plan for anything that might happen.

Most of us have admitted that if we’re in a restaurant or a meeting somewhere that we’re going to be sitting somewhere that we’re facing the door.

I met with my teacher. She couldn’t remember if she told our class to run. And she has struggled with that. She’s found out since then that she did, but she says she wishes that she could remember telling us to run.

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Coming up on the 30th anniversary [in 2018], the people that were in our support group, a lot of them were talking about wanting to see everybody. So I asked in the group how everyone felt about meeting at the garden. A lot of people came out to help, and we spruced it up.

One of the girls that died, her mom came. She had not been back either. Those families felt like no one remembered them either. Didn’t really feel like they had the support from the community.

None of us did. That’s what I’m trying to work on. I want people to know, who were victims, that it’s okay to talk about it.

Then Uvalde happened. I had the worst panic attack I’d ever had. Uvalde was different for everybody.

I wanted to help everybody. But I knew I had to work on myself. I met with this counselor. I processed really what happened when I never had done that before. And that did something for me. I was able to figure out why am I afraid to go out in the dark by myself. The night terrors. Feeling vulnerable, not being in control, not knowing what’s going to happen.

We kind of talked in the group about who had gotten counseling. I started searching on the internet: “free resources for mass shooting victims.”

I found several. And one of those was Voices Center for Resilience. I reached out to them.

Within the next month, we already had our first session scheduled. It was virtual, which was huge, because there’s people who don’t live in Greenwood anymore.

I made it very clear in our group that we’re going to focus on talking about the things that we’re dealing with, the things that make it better. And if you want to talk about your memories of that day, you can, but it’s not pushed at all.

We’ve had three sessions. And in each of those, there’s always one person that says, “I’m sorry. I’ve never talked about it before.”

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