Mom learned her 3-year-old son’s life was in danger in school—her brave act while being 8 months pregnant left everyone stunned
Trigger Warning- This article contains mentions of gun violence and death that may be distressing for some readers.
A parent might be ready to do anything to ensure that their child is safe. However, a pregnant woman stunned everyone with her action when she learned that her 3-year-old son was in danger. The mom, Laura DuSchane, had walked her son, Rory, to his preschool and had just come back home across the street from the Annunciation Catholic School when she heard gunshot sounds. DuSchane climbed up on a table in her yard and noticed smoke emanating from the building before she sprang into action, per the Minnesota Star Tribune.
DuSchane panicked as she turned to her neighbors and asked what she should do as her kid was inside the school. The woman jogged to the school even though she was told to go back for her safety. The police had arrived at the scene by the time the mom reached the school. "I said, 'I'm running up there. I have to go find my kid.'" She was devastated by the condition of the church and the school. "I saw kids filing out of the church. I saw my neighbor helping bloodied kids out of the church and I think I was like, I can't really spend too much time looking at this because I know what I’m seeing is really bad."
The woman reached the entrance of the school and found her son's classroom. "There’s an active shooter and we need to barricade this room," DuSchane told her son's teacher. "17 3-year-olds sat and were quiet and didn’t move and didn’t run." Soon enough, they learned that the shooter died because of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The mom then helped direct her son's class to an area where they could meet their parents. "I’m walking away and there are parents running at me and I’m watching their faces. I only had to feel that feeling for about 15 minutes, and that was the worst 15 minutes of my entire life." Her young child couldn't really understand the gravity of the entire situation.
"My child does not know what a shooter is and doesn’t know what a gun is. The narrative we talked about yesterday was that there was a monster at the school," DuSchane expressed. The shooter was identified as Robin Westman, 23, who was a former student at the school. It is known that the woman acted alone and search warrants were given for the church and the three residences associated with her, per NBC News. The suspect opened fire through the church windows while the students were attending the first mass of the year at the Annunciation Catholic Church.
The gunshots aimed at students sitting in the pews killed two children aged 8 and 10 and injured 18 other people. The 18 people included 15 children from the ages of 6 to 15 and three parishioners in their 80s. There were no previous criminal records filed under the suspect's name. Gun violence in the United States has become a public health crisis, according to a study titled "School Shootings in the United States: 1997–2022," published in the American Academy of Pediatrics, because gun injury was the leading cause of death in children from birth to 19 years old in 2019. The Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit organization founded and run by families of victims who lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2012, called school shootings and gun violence a "uniquely American epidemic." Each day, 12 children die from gun violence in the country and 32 others are shot or injured, per the source. Gun-related deaths are five times more prevalent than drowning deaths. Since the 1999 Columbine school shooting, 390,000 students have experienced gun violence at school in the US, stated the NGO.