Editorial: Showing kindness can honor those who died at festival
Remembering that event and honoring those who died or were injured helps to heal our community
Photo by Robert Airoldi From left: Gilroy Mayor Marie Blankley, and councilmembers Fred Tovar and Rebeca Armendariz. They placed bouquets at the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting memorial in Christmas Hill Park July 28, the second annivesary of the mass shooting.
This editorial is the opinion of Gilroy Life
As the growing cancer of incivility eats away at the fibers of American society, let’s choose to make kindness our country’s keystone. If we show compassion to one another and follow the path to peace and amity through our words and actions, our South Valley community’s quality of life will grow immensely.
Let’s especially meditate on this homily as we face the second-year anniversary of a horrific incident that brought world attention to our region. About two dozen people, many public officials, gathered the morning of July 28 at Christmas Hill Park to remember the carnage in 2019 when a 19-year-old man opened fire on the visitors and vendors of the Gilroy Garlic Festival during its closing hour. They met by a small garden memorial built in the area where the mass shooting occurred. Three large stones represent those who died: Stephen Romero, age 6; Keyla Salazar, age 13; and Trevor Deon Irby, age 25. Seventeen posts of a wooden fence around the memorial represent the number of victims injured in the assault.
The shooter could have maimed or murdered more festival guests had it not been for three Gilroy police officers — Eric Cryar, Hugo Del Moral, and Robert Basuino. They ran toward the mayhem armed with handguns. Within a minute they fired at the man with the assault-style rifle. The perpetrator dropped to his knees, fell back and took his own life. The officers’ swift response saved many lives. Authorities never determined a motive for the act of violence.
Remembering that event and honoring those who died or were injured helps to heal our community. It empowers the men, women and children who were impacted to deal with the trauma and shock of having their lives in jeopardy — and the ongoing sorrow of losing loved ones.
The days between Monday July 26 and Friday July 30 served as “The Week of Kindness” in the South Valley this year. Various organizers and agencies in the community sought ways to help the community focus on the positive aspect of our lives to help us move beyond the pain. It serves also to remind us that the wisdom of kindness can guide us not only for a week but for all the weeks throughout our lives. More of us showing kindness to our fellow human beings can make our community safer for all.
Shortly after the Garlic Festival shootings in 2019, a study compiled by the Violence Project, a nonpartisan think tank dedicated to reducing violence in society, was published that provided the most comprehensive and detailed database of mass shooters to that date. Commissioned by the Department of Justice, researchers Jillian Peterson and James Densley coded to 100 different variables to determine commonalities of the killers.
Their study found the vast majority of mass shooters experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. “The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and/or severe bullying. The trauma was often a precursor to mental health concerns, including depression, anxiety, thought disorders or suicidality,” they wrote.
If we wish to build safer communities for ourselves and our families and friends, we need to find ways to be more caring to each other. Creating a gentler and kinder society in the long run will help in ending gun violence. And, of course, we also need to find ways to go beyond politics and seek ways to work together to create smart and sane laws to prevent firearms from getting into the hands of people who intend to use them to harm men, women and children.
We will end this editorial with words sent to us by Gilroy Mayor Marie Blankley, who spoke at the Christmas Hill Park memorial ceremony:
“It is with heavy hearts that we remember the lives lost and those forever changed by a sudden act of violence at Gilroy’s 41st annual Garlic Festival two years ago. There remains no reason why this senseless and horrific act occurred at the Garlic Festival specifically, only that it was a large gathering of people like so many other festivals and celebrations. What also remains is a nationwide challenge to end violence committed with weapons that are already illegal, such as the one used in this incident.”