“The best defense against this kind of thing, the school shooting is, that if you hear something or see something is tell authorities. And that’s exactly what she did. I know it had to have been really hard for her to do that, to turn in her grandson like that. But she quite honestly probably saved a lot of lives including her grandson.” -Mukilteo School District spokesperson Andy Muntz to Q13 News.
Aimee Herd : Feb 15, 2018 : FoxNews.com
(Washington state) “If you see something, say something.” It’s simple, direct and easy to remember. It’s a phrase that’s been repeated by law authorities and others to help combat terrorism and also to hopefully prevent school shootings. (Screengrab: O’Connor (right) with state defense attorney/via Q13 News)
Unfortunately for those victims in the Parkland, Florida shooting, Wednesday, it seems no one took this advice, as many stated after it happened that it came as no surprise that alleged suspect Nikolas Cruz would carry out such a heinous massacre.
But on the very same day that Cruz allegedly put his deadly plan into action, there was one bloodbath-which possibly could’ve been worse-that was avoided, all thanks to an alert grandma.
This grandmother must have been somehow clued-in to signs that her grandson was troubled and took a look at his journal. She had good reason to be horrified at what she found there.
“I’m preparing myself for the school shooting. I can’t wait. My aim has gotten much more accurate… I can’t wait to walk into that class and blow all those **** away,” an entry in the journal read, according to the court documents, and a FoxNews.comreport.
An Everett Police Dept. news release noted: the grandmother contacted authorities around 9:30 a.m. and showed police excerpts of the journal, which “detailed plans to shoot students and use homemade explosive devices at ACES High School.” Officers were also told by the grandmother that 18-year-old Joshua Alexander O’Connor had a rifle stored in a guitar case, which she discovered after reading the journal.
Everett Police Officer Aaron Snell told Q13 News: “That would have probably been one of the hardest calls she has probably ever made, but I think that the content of the journal and some of the other evidence in the house was enough that she was alarmed enough.”
According to the report, O’Connor was arrested at the school, and even tried to escape police by slipping out of one of his handcuffs.
Later on, after obtaining a search warrant at the grandmother’s home where O’Connor had been living, they “seized the journal, a rifle, “military styled inert grenades and other evidentiary items.”
One of the things O’Connor wrote in his journal was that he needed to get the “biggest fatality number” he possibly could so the shooting would be “infamous,” indicating that had his grandmother not taken action, he very well may have stuck to his deadly plan, and it would’ve likely been worse than has already been seen in the U.S. (Screengrab: Excerpt fronm O’Connor’s journal/via Q13 News)
Right now O’Connor is being held on $5 million bail with three felony counts.
Yes, that must have been the hardest call that grandma ever had to make, but the students who attend ACES High School, and their parents, are no doubt very glad she made it.