“Only a Matter of Time”: Weary Coloradans Mourn Another Mass Shooting in Their State

We spoke with mourners at an impromptu memorial outside the supermarket where 10 were killed.

Abigail Weinberg

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The day after a gunman killed 10 people, including a police officer, at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, Paige Murray, a mourner at a makeshift vigil at the edge of the crime scene, described Coloradans’ weariness at experiencing yet another mass shooting: “It’s only a matter of time before it ends up in your backyard.”

Seven mass shootings have taken place in Colorado since 1982, according to our database. And these shootings have included some of the most high-profile cases: the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, the 2015 attack on a Planned Parenthood. Many of the people who came to place flowers at the chainlink fence set up around the supermarket parking lot described a strange mixture of desensitization to mass shootings in the state and disbelief that the massacre had happened in their small community.

Murray, a 51-year-old attorney who visits the supermarket multiple times a week, said it’s difficult for people who aren’t from the area to understand how central the King Soopers is to Boulder. “This shopping plaza is kind of the heart of our community,” she said. “It’s really close to home.”

Abigail Weinberg

Paige McSavaney, an 18-year-old student and Boulder native, said she grew up buying food from King Soopers during her school lunch breaks. “I felt a lot of anger and sadness and emptiness,” she said shortly after placing sunflowers in the chainlink fence on Tuesday.

McSavaney had been close to the violence. On Monday, she had been driving through a nearby intersection shortly after the shooting began. Because the intersection was blocked by police, she had pulled into the King Soopers parking lot and waited in her car until a SWAT team member ushered her to safety. The next day, her car remained fenced inside the crime scene. “I think the entire community is just struck by and shocked about how devastatingly impactful this could be, and how someone can have so much hatred in their body in order to come shoot people who are trying to feed themselves,” she said.

Abigail Weinberg

For Joseph Ott, a 17-year-old wearing a King Soopers mask, the supermarket was more than a community gathering spot—it was his place of work. Ott, a high school student, mostly works weekends, but was friends with three employees who were killed: Rikki Olds, Denny Stong, and Teri Leiker.

“I’m thinking a lot about the people I lost,” he said. “I’ve known these people for a long time.”

“Sometimes I’ll feel used or hurt for no reason,” Ott said, because of the occasional bad customer. “And then today, all these people showed up. And it shows that they care a little. It means a lot.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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