Columnist Brumfield: 10 miles away as the horrific Virginia Beach mass shooting unfolded
It’s a pre-summer overcast afternoon on Friday, May 31, 2019 in downtown Virginia Beach. Crowds are light, parking is plentiful. Walk-by traffic is so slow for the tourism lady she is standing out front on Atlantic Avenue, almost daring someone to stop in and schedule a dolphin-watching excursion.
At 26th and Atlantic the boardwalk is almost empty. A few college-age kids pedal by on ill-fitting rented bicycles. A few more throw frisbees on the blank expanse of warm sand while teenage locals zip by on rented Bird scooters, with no helmets or knee pads. What do they care, they’re invincible. In their giant beach chairs, lifeguards try to remain interested while twirling their whistles. They’re bored.
By 3:00 pm the clouds clear, the sun is overhead and people stream out of their beachfront hotel rooms to finally enjoy the sand and surf. The lifeguards wake up, and buffet restaurants post signs stating they will be opening at 4:00. Not one of the numerous surf shops sell clip-on sunglasses anymore. Helpful clerks suggest Walgreens at 24th Street. My receipt says my car is safe until 4:47. I hand a dollar to a homeless woman sitting in front of a pancake restaurant.
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As I stand in Walgreens at 24th and Atlantic, comparing clip-on sunglasses and considering purchasing a bottled water, a disgruntled employee of the Virginia Beach Public Works department is entering the Municipal Center only 10 miles away. He is armed with at least two weapons. I have no idea – nor do any of the other tourists wandering past me, comparing cheap t-shirts and visors before getting in a few precious hours of sun.
This is the ordinary horror of mass shootings. It happens practically next door, at a moment’s notice. And life goes on, just 10 miles away from those who run in horror and cower under furniture, behind doors and in closets to save their own and their co-worker’s lives. While it is 10 miles away, it is a moment so far removed from the realities of day to day life that it seems unbelievable to those enduring it as it happens.
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Many folks may have just picked up a weekly paycheck and decided to stop by the government offices to pay a parking ticket before the weekend are struck down by arms fire, unloaded mercilessly into their bodies with a .45 and a rifle legally purchased by a 40-year-old city engineer named Dwayne Craddock, for reasons unknown. He had silencers and many magazines. He apparently emptied and reloaded many times. He was prepared for a massacre.
I am oblivious to what is happening as I price sunglasses and watch mostly older tourists in out-of-fashion swimwear pad down the boardwalk. I am not hiding behind a counter, listening to fellow residents and co-workers being killed. I am 10 miles away.
While hundreds lay in the sun on the beach, 12 lay dead only 10 miles away at the hands of a “disgruntled” city employee. And again, we ask why. “I couldn’t believe this was happening,” witness after witness tells CNN. Those people were not invincible, not at all.
As I leave the oceanfront and drive to my hotel near Independence Boulevard, I am perplexed at the number of police cars I see screaming south. I think it must have been a bad accident. It isn’t until I get checked in that I turn on the news and realize the sickening horror that took place at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center, 10 mile away.
The Virginia Beach police, first responders and Sentara hospital staff acted with resolve and with honor. Their training and professionalism stopped the situation from escalating. They are heroes.
Meanwhile, as Mayor Bobby Dyer calls May 31, 2019 the most tragic day in Virginia Beach history, an army private maneuvers a cart-load of clothes and packages onto the hotel elevator to his room. Several men sit at the hotel bar watching ESPN. Two women escort six giggling little girls into the pool area. And tourists at 26th and Atlantic pack up and trudge, weary and sandy, back to their beachfront rooms, maybe to clean up and visit those buffets that opened at the very moment a man named Craddock entered the government center 10 miles away and took 12 lives.
Another American mass shooting. Dan Rather calls it a national health epidemic. Is anyone listening?
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