Posted on 03/04/2007 7:34:02 PM PST by TheDon
Choking on her blood on the floor of Cabin Fever, Carolyn Tuft inched toward Kirsten, her mortally wounded daughter, to tell her that she loved her. Their faces close, she took her hand.
Mother and daughter had been in the store for just a few minutes, not even at the Valentine's Day cards yet, when Tuft heard a "pop." They were laughing and browsing, and at first Tuft paid little attention. As the danger became apparent, she couldn't know if it was safer where they were or out in the hall. She walked over to the window to see what was going on.
That's when she saw a flash, heard a bang and felt glass from a shattered window rip into her arm.
Kirsten Hinckley, 15, told her mother to get down. They crouched, and Sulejman Talovic came into the shop at Trolley Square. Tuft lifted her eyes. Talovic stared straight at her and shot her in the right arm and lung.
He left, then inexplicably returned. He raised his shotgun again, and this time Tuft could feel the muzzle on her back as he fired.
....
Of all the children, Kirsten was most like her mother. Like her, she baked, and she adored cats. When she was little, she dressed up her cats and tucked them into cradles.
"They were her babies," Tuft recalled.
Once, a stray cat left a litter of kittens on the family's doorstep. Everyone took turns bottle-feeding them every three hours, all through the night. The kittens followed them around like ducklings, safe with a family that tackled the world as a team.
Yet Kirsten stood out in a particular way.
"She was the only one of us with long-term plans [at such a young age]," Scott Hinckley said.
The girl dreamed of studying architecture at a school called The Bartlett, in London, a city that had captivated her on a past trip. At home, she stuck motivational notes around her room reminding her about what she needed to do to reach her goal. In the last few days before she died, Kirsten talked about wanting to visit Fallingwater, the elegant Frank Lloyd Wright house in Pennsylvania.
One day, the family will visit Bartlett, their beloved's unrealized dream. Scott wants to leave flowers on its steps.
'She'd want us to be happy'
For now, though, it's time to heal. Tuft's right arm is numb, and her muscles are atrophying. To begin regaining her strength, she practiced simple rehabilitation exercises Saturday, moving a cup from one stack to another. Scott massaged her hand to keep it from getting stiff.
If all goes well, she may go home this week. She'll have a hospital bed at home, and she'll need her family's constant care. Without insurance, her medical bills will only grow.
Tuft is resolute: She'll pick up a brush and paint again. She doesn't plan to go back to her housecleaning work, leaving future employment a question mark.
But she's a survivor. Five years ago, she was loading her minivan when a drunken driver plowed into the car, tossing her into the air. Scott rode in the ambulance with his mom and said goodbye. She still carries plates and screws beneath the skin of her face.
After Trolley Square, she said Saturday, "I shouldn't be alive, because there are pellets all around my vital organs."
That may be true, Scott said. But he believes it would be self-destructive to dwell on the what-ifs.
"I have cried, and I will cry," Tuft said.
"For forever," Scott added.
"But it's not going to get us anywhere," Tuft said. For one thing, they need to feed Kirsten's cats. "She'd want us to be happy, to use this experience to help other people."
That's already happening. Hundreds of people, from as far as New Zealand and France, have been touched by what happened at Trolley Square and have been moved to write to Tuft. One of the messages hangs on the wall next to her bed. It reads: "You made a difference for good in the world."
SLTRIB.com: "TROLLEY SQUARE: SUSPECT RARELY SEEN BY HIS NEIGHBORS A high school drop-out, Talovic's life and motive for the shooting remain a mystery" by Matthew D. LaPlante (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Police say the gunman met his first two victims in the parking lot, firing off two rounds as they fell. "Die, motherf-----," Talovic said to them, according to one witness. Talovic appears to have uttered few further words. Witnesses said he moved deliberately through the ground floor corridors, firing round after round at helpless others, sometimes swearing, sometimes ordering his victims not to look at him. In seemingly random fashion, showing no emotion, he slaughtered five people and seriously wounded four others.") (Last updated February 14, 2007, 01:29 AM MST)
DESERET NEWS.com: "6 MINUTES OF HORROR: SHOOTER AIMED TO KILL AS MANY AS HE COULD" by Pat Reavy and Ben Winslow (ARTICLE SNIPPET: ""His intent was to shoot as many people as he possibly could," said Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank. Police released details Tuesday on Talovic's shooting rampage that left five people dead before off-duty Ogden police officer Ken Hammond and four Salt Lake City police officers killed him in "a shootout," Burbank said. Four other shooting victims are hospitalized. Talovic was armed with a shotgun, a .38-caliber handgun and "a backpack full of ammunition," Burbank said. Around the man's waist was a bandolier of shotgun shells. "He had a pump shotgun," said one witness, DeEtta Barta. "He was shooting, and he shot about four shots.") (February 14, 2007)
I think the solution is to bring more muslims to the US, and transfer more of our tax dollars to them.
Notice, no women allowed at the funeral.
Of course now he's a Good Jihadi.
L
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4185/column-terror-attacks-by-any-other-name
For The Record - The IPT Blog
“Column: Terror Attacks by Any Other Name”
by IPT News Oct 15, 2013 at 1:08 pm
SNIPPET: “In Nairobi, well-armed gunmen stormed a shopping mall intending to kill as many people as possible. They asked victims about their religion, sparing the lives of Muslim shoppers.
At least 67 people were killed in the attack. The world rightly sees this as an act of terrorism.
Six years earlier, a well-armed gunman stormed a shopping mall in Salt Lake City, intending to kill as many people as possible. Witnesses say he shouted “Allahu Akbar!” or “Allah is greatest!” as he opened fire, killing five people before being shot by an off-duty police officer.
Described as a religious Muslim, the gunman reportedly bragged of a jihadist grandfather and attended a mosque suspected of radicalizing him.
Sulejmen Talovic’s February 2007 attack is not classified as a terrorist attack, but rather cast as “the act of a madman.” In a New York Post column Sunday, writer Paul Sperry wonders why. And he points out that fears of a terrorist attack on an American mall, based on the Kenya attack by the Islamist terrorist group al-Shabaab, ignore the fact that such attacks already have happened here.”
http://nypost.com/2013/10/12/could-the-kenya-mall-attack-ever-happen-here-it-already-did/
“Could the Kenya attack happen here? It did”
By Paul Sperry
October 12, 2013 | 9:45pm
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