Community members, students and alumni of Central Visual and Performing Arts High School and Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience mourned the lives lost one year after a school shooting in south St. Louis.
Some students and their families spent time in nature, hiking or visiting the Missouri Botanical Gardens, which was free for the school community on Tuesday. Throughout the day, other organizations held remembrances and looked to the future, discussing change they still hope to see.
After sunset, dozens pinned orange ribbons to their shirts and gathered to pray, sing and reflect under the towering arches of St. Margaret of Scotland Parish in St. Louis’ Shaw neighborhood, across Tower Grove Park from the schools.
“We as a family are still processing our own trauma from what the kids experienced last year,” said Emily Schiltz, a parishioner and parent of two Collegiate students. “It really was horrific, the things that they heard and the things that they saw have changed them and changed our family forever. My children will never not know the sound of an AR-15 being shot in the hallway right outside their door.”
At the vigil, Schiltz and her family held space for student Alexzandria Bell and teacher Jean Kuczka, who were killed in the shooting. Schiltz said her family is looking forward, in search of ways to reduce deaths from gun violence.
Last year, around the time of the shooting, the church started a working group called Gun Sense: For the Common Good, which Schiltz is a part of. Parishioners have organized vigils, traveled to Jefferson City to advocate for changes to gun laws and passed out lawn signs.
The church is also working to document and pray for victims of gun violence in St. Louis. Along one wall in the sanctuary, there are candles lit for gun-related deaths in St. Louis in the past week; by Tuesday night there were already four flickering candles. In front of the candles, a binder is open, filled with pages and pages of photos and information about the people who have been shot and killed in the region in the past year.
“While the school shootings get a lot of the press and a lot of the heartache, all the lives lost by gun violence were lives of value,” Schiltz, Collegiate’s PTO president, said. “And so the church committee is working to, between advocacy, education and holding space for the lives lost, continue to find the way.”
Community clinic hosts healing event
The Bullet Related Injury Clinic and several other nonprofit and community organizations hosted a day of remembrance and healing on Tuesday.
Organizers, along with students, family and anyone else affected by shootings, also released balloons later in the afternoon for Bell and Kuczka. They estimate 20 people attended the events at the clinic near the Delmar Loop.
To help heal, BRIC and the other organizations offered a variety of activities like acupuncture, massage, art or safe spaces for anyone to talk throughout the day.
“Whatever works well because everybody grieves differently, and everybody heals differently,” said Dr. LJ Punch, the clinic’s medical director. “If we don’t make spaces for all those different forms of healing, then we’re stopping people from stepping into their true full healing.”
In fact, the first young person who arrived Tuesday morning had decided on an activity, Punch said.
“The first thing they wanted to do was boxing,” said Punch, who was prepared with boxing gloves and punching mitts.
For the clinic, which offers both physical and mental long-term services to victims of gunshots, Tuesday’s event falls right into its mission by helping victims to address the whole problem.
“When you're really wanting to heal someone's physical pain, we have to deal with the emotional pain attached,” said Jamila Owens-Todd, a naturopathic doctor at the clinic.
On the anniversary of the shooting, Punch and Owens-Todd said the day will be difficult for the students at both CVPA and Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience and their families.
“It's a relived trauma because you have to drive by the school, or you have to think about where your child goes,” Owens-Todd said. “And that builds and builds, and it creates layers of trauma that sometimes we can't even articulate that's present.”
A number of groups, including the St. Louis Regional Health Commission, Alive & Well Communities, Village Path and Youth Council for Positive Development aided the event.
Jamala Rogers, who was volunteering with the youth council, said just because the community may not see the trauma inflicted by the shooting in everyday life doesn’t mean it’s not there. She said she hopes events like this can provide some relief.
“We want that family, the Central Visual Performing Arts family, to know that they are not forgotten,” Rogers said. “We feel their pain, and we are committed to addressing that on policy levels or legislative levels — on personal levels.”
