There was a scary reminder this week of two terrible incidents that happened 16 years ago this month in San Diego’s East County.
This week, a 15 year old student at Chino Hills High School in San Bernardino was arrested this week on charges of threatening what he called a “Columbine-like attack” at his school. He was placed in Juvenile Hall before anything happened.
But this week, on March 22nd back in 2001, a high school shooting did happen in El Cajon. It happened less than three weeks after a high school shooting in Santee on March 5th of 2001.
Two students were killed and 13 others wounded at Santana High School and then just a few miles away later that month three student and two teachers were shot and wounded at Granite Hills High School.
And the year before these shootings was when Columbine happened in Colorado. Sadly, as we all know now, there would be more school shootings.
It was just six months after the high school shootings in our East County in 2001 that the September 11th attacks happened and that’s when everything changed.
And now we live in a world where we all know about lockdowns and tight security. But is there a danger of becoming too familiar with all of this?
When the attack in London happened this week, some of the reaction was almost casual. There was just as much or even more talk on cable news that night about Washington politics than there was about a deadly attack outside the seat of the British government in London.
Have we become that used to these kinds of things happening? Let’s hope not because that could make it harder to do what it takes to win this fight against terror.
(Photo credit Getty Images)