Shooting tragedy impacts parenting job
Some things are just unexplainable. It’s difficult for an adult to fathom what possessed Charles Carl Roberts IV to go into an Amish school, tie up young girls and execute them before turning the gun on himself – but try explaining that to a child.
I usually don’t watch the television news at home. After just having spent eight hours immersed in the events of the day, I really don’t see the need.
The sideline of that is that I also try not to expose my 5-year-old to the often-crazy outside world.
But on Monday, the day of the shooting, my mother came over for pizza, and I flipped on the news, figuring she’d be happier with that than our usual visual fare of the cartoon “Teen Titans.”
I sent Gabe from the room on a mystery mission meant to help him avoid coverage of what had happened halfway across the state in Lancaster County.
My mom, who had not yet heard, listened and shook her head, and we both wondered what makes someone do something like that.
When it went off, I yelled for him to come back, and he bounded into the room, knowing full well I had sent him away to avoid something.
“What happened?” he asked.
I went with my typical line, telling him that a bad man did something and the police had to come, assuring him that it happened far away from home.
“Oh,” he replied.
Then, like a typical child, it was on to something else … until the anchor came back on to update what was happening as police investigated.
This time, I wasn’t quick enough to send him away, and he heard more than I had hoped. I was quick with the assurances that it was far away, and the bad man was no longer a danger, but I could see his wheels turning.
Although he said nothing else about it that night, he asked the following day about the girls who had died. The questions were rough.
How was I to answer why it happened, or explain what would possess someone to commit such a heinous act?
So I hugged him – tightly and with tears in my eyes.
“I don’t know,” I told him, not eager to explain what police said they found in Roberts’ suicide notes. “But it won’t happen here, baby.”
He didn’t seem wholly reassured, and I renewed my resolve to keep the news off at home. Unfortunately, he knows that I deal in news for a living.
He asks a lot of questions about my profession. Gabe knows I talk to police officers and go into a courthouse to sit through, as he puts it, “stuff with judges.” He tries to pry a bit into what exactly that “stuff” entails, and he wonders why I know so many police officers.
He makes the connection that police arrest the bad guys – and I think I’ve successfully parlayed his image of police as heroes into a great deal of respect for law enforcement. It’s something I think parents sometimes forget to instill in their children.
Still it doesn’t seem enough. I worry that, as school shootings crop up in small towns across the country, that something could happen here.
Realistically, I know there’s only the tiniest chance that it would. The districts in the area have taken steps to protect students, and for that, all parents should be thankful.
But the reality of life is that bad things do happen, and they happen without warning. I see it every day in court, where I have worked for nearly eight years. People kill, they rape and they beat and rob. It’s ugly, but it’s life.
Yet I try to insulate my son from it because I know that as he grows, he will learn about it on his own.
I wonder sometimes how police manage to do what they do for years at a time. “CSI,” “Law and Order” – all the crime drama shows – they give the slightest glimpse at what a real crime scene is. Producers trot out a neat bullet wound or a feisty rape victim, but that’s rarely the case.
Most of us in the newsroom have been to a crime scene. We watch from a distance as police do their thing, keeping us at bay while they concentrate on the investigation.
We know more often than not we are a nuisance to them, asking questions as they try to piece together what happened. But most come over and offer us something, knowing that we too, have a job to do.
Then we come back and try to process what we’ve seen, and give it to you, the readers, in a manner that is descriptive without being offensive, and in a way that gives the news without being sensational.
Like the police, we sometimes live with things we’ve seen that aren’t always easy to forget. I have things that bother me -things I’ve seen and heard – but I’ve accepted it as part of my job.
While it might not be realistic, I pray and hope daily that my son never has any of those experiences and the bad people in this world, like Roberts, never taint his life.
Jennifer Harr is Fayette County court reporter for the Herald-Standard. She can be reached at 724-439-7557 or jharr@heraldstandard.com