March 22, 2021 will be a day we remember for a lifetime. Panic flew across Boulder County Monday afternoon when an active shooter entered Boulder’s local grocery store. For most of us, terror shifted to relief as we accounted for our loved ones: “I’m home…I’m safe.” For the families and friends of ten people, those reassuring texts never arrived. Our hearts are hurting, already broken by the killings in Atlanta last week; the murder of 8 people including six women of Asian descent.
At SPAN, first and always, we join the Boulder community to express our deepest love and sorrow for the victims of this most recent act of horrific violence, and for the people they leave behind. One of the lives taken yesterday was Officer Eric Talley, a Boulder Police Officer who was committed to connecting survivors of domestic violence to SPAN in times of crisis. Officer Talley has been instrumental in protecting survivors in our community over the past ten years. He will be deeply missed.
We will learn more about the nine other lives lost in the coming days: the dreams they held, the people they touched, the families and friends who loved them. And we will honor and mourn their loss to our community.
We all go grocery shopping. It is the most common, even banal activity imaginable. And despite the respite COVID seemed to give us from mass shootings, we are all too close to finding these killings commonplace as well. Thoughts and prayers, some tweets and Facebook posts and we all go on with our lives, waiting for the next active shooter event to hit our news streams.
We don’t have to live this way. We must never accept this violence and destruction as the norm.
SPAN is #BoulderStrong, helping as best we can to pick up the pieces. We are still here. If you need someone to talk to about violence happening in your life, call our Crisis Line at 303-444-2424. Visit commfound.org and donate to the Boulder Crisis Fund to support victims of the King Soopers shooting.