Almost simultaneously, the reports started coming in. The first from the city of Riverside when police responded to a report of a man possibly with a gun holding someone hostage in a classroom at an elementary school.
Just a few minutes later, the reports started coming in from New York City that a truck had run down multiple people on a bike path and shots were being fired.
Two different incidents in two places far away from each other.
But in both, after the reports of what had happened spread, parents of kids at that elementary school in Riverside and the parents of kid at a high school very near to what happened in Lower Manhattan, were filled with fear.
The man holding a teacher hostage in the school classroom in Riverside for several hours was eventually shot dead by police. The female teacher he held was safe.
The man who drove his truck through a crowd of people walking or riding bikes was also shot by police and he will survive. But eight of those people he hit are dead. And in the school bus he crashed into, two students were injured.
But after both incidents were over, that feeling of fear had overtaken only parents and teachers at that school in Riverside and the parents of that school in New York City, but as the news coverage continued, everyone from Riverside to New York was probably thinking, is it safe anywhere anymore.
Sadly, hostage standoffs with police and terror attacks using vehicles are not new. And when these things happen that affect a small city in Southern California or the biggest city in the country in New York, the feelings of fear of what’s happening re-emerge.
And each time, you cling to your family a little harder. But life does go on because it must. And because there is still hope about the future.
(Photo credit Getty Images)