The city of Bend, Ore., mourned at a candlelight vigil on Thursday evening, with prayers echoing through the ponderosa pines, as residents still negotiated police barricades hours after a deadly shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School.
Hundreds gathered at Drake Park for the hastily called memorial to mourn the victims of the shooting, in which three children and a teacher were killed. There were messages of remembrance written in chalk, along with calls for tighter gun control laws. But the ceremony itself was somber and quiet, save for prayers and hymns, as parents hugged their children and a pastor reminded them, “God loves you, even if it may not seem likely sometimes.”
“This community has already been through so much,” said Kaylee Daniels, recalling the 2022 shooting at a grocery store in Bend in which a 20-year-old with an AR-15-style rifle fired more than 100 rounds, killing two people and then himself. “It’s hard to know how you deal with something this horrible.”
Ms. Daniels brought her two daughters to the memorial, and her 9-year-old clung to her, weeping and asking questions. The girl attends a different school in Bend, but her classroom teacher turned off the lights and locked the door suddenly on Thursday afternoon when it was unclear whether multiple campuses might be in danger.
“We had a talk on the drive home, and I had to just explain to her that this can happen anywhere,” Ms. Daniels said.
Elaine Hammitt received calls from friends across the country wondering if her children were safe. They were, but Ms. Hammitt’s wife, an emergency room doctor at St. Charles Hospital in the city, was on the team that treated shooting victims.
“She asked us if we could come and give her a hug, because she needed to hold her daughter for a second,” Ms. Hammitt said.
At the vigil, participants held candles and listened to pastors praying for the victims, the students and teachers of Silver Rail, emergency medical workers and the children of Bend.
“We have many questions, Lord, and we don’t have many answers,” said R.J. Strickland, a pastor at Bend Church of the Nazarene, in a prayer.
At Silver Rail Elementary, police tape blocked off the area around the school near Brentwood Avenue. Several police officers guided local traffic through streets and discussed the shooting with concerned neighbors, but the general atmosphere was subdued after the earlier flurry of police and emergency response vehicles.
Lacy Monahan, 38, was stopping by her ex-husband’s house to check on her daughter Willow Fink, 10, who attends Silver Rail and was at school when the shooting happened.
“I’ve been crying all day,” Ms. Monahan said, as she went to meet her daughter inside the house. “It was hectic, but it’s slowed down now. I don’t think I’ve ever had as bad a feeling in my entire life.”
Willow Fink, who is in fifth grade, said that her class had been reading when she heard gunshots.
“Everyone ran to the window, and then someone said that there was a shooter with a gun, and then we all kind of all just started trying to look closer through the window,” she said.
A vice principal came into the room and instructed the children to duck down by their lockers in a corner before turning the room’s lights off, as they had been taught to do during active shooter drills. It was only a few minutes before police arrived, the girl said.
“We all knew where to go,” she said. “I was scared, but I felt more calm then than I do now for some reason.”
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