It was an image nobody needed to see.
Yesterday I saw the face of a young woman moments before she died.
At first she had a look of confusion on her face. She was unsure. Perplexed. What was going on? But then a change. A change in her eyes.
The horror in her eyes.
I didn’t want to see it.
I turned from it and clicked away. I tried to erase its imprint on my brain by swiveling in my chair to gaze at photos of my children. But it stayed burned into my thoughts.
The face of a women before she died. It’s still there. When I close my eyes I can still see it.
Did you see it too? Unintentionally? Like me.
I first saw it as the rest of my household slept, in the very early hours of the morning, just an hour after she died. I was up writing the news for Mamamia and breaking was the horrific story of a TV reporter and Camera operator in Virginia in the US gunned down live to air.
As I worked I couldn’t escape the images. Her face. The gun. The terrible moment the realisation dawns.
As I scrolled through Facebook there she was again.
A beautiful 24-year old woman moments from the end of her life, now a viral video. It’s repulsive in its intrusiveness.
The news we woke to this morning was shocking in the telling.
Alison Parker, a young, hard-working reporter, her fun-loving camera operator, 27-year old Adam Ward, dedicated professionals.
The facts were hard enough to grasp. How could a former colleague do this? What could possibly motivate such a horrendous act? It was unfathomable.
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I've worked the past seven nights as a night-cover doctor in a busy tertiary hospital. Over the last week I've seen several people die in front of me. Last moments aren't a new concept for me. But even with this background, it doesn't mean that I'm okay with seeing a picture of a look of horror on a young woman's face, frozen forever in time, splashed across the front page of the morning paper. It made me feel sick to my stomach and I had to turn the paper over. She should be remembered for how she was in life, not as a sensationalist screen capture of her last breath. It's cruel and unnecessary.
I respectfully disagree Shauna. At least for Americans, I think they do need to see it. They need to see that this is what a horrible death looks like at the hands of a mentally unstable person with a gun in a State and a country where guns are far too easy to obtain. After Sandy Hook and the murder of those poor little school children I thought, "surely this would be their Port Arthur. Surely this would be enough to galvanise the political courage to toughen gun control". But little kids murdered in their classrooms was not enough; families shot down while enjoying a movie was not enough; people slain while praying in their church was not enough. Perhaps seeing the very moment when being able to easily get a gun terrorises and ends the life of two innocent people will be enough. I genuinely doubt it but until then I don't think any politician or even any voter in the United States can afford the right to say "I didn't need to see that". Because honestly, the next time they might not just be seeing it on tv but living it in their place of work, their home, their children's school, their shopping centre or church.
So true! Of course no one 'wants' to see an innocent person being killed. We watch movies and television that shows death by gunshot on a regular basis with a lot of blood and gore but this wasn't fiction. This was real. If laws are to change, it needs to be real to those gun loving Americans that believe that owning a gun is an important part of their constitution.
They're proud that the country was built on a gun, you only need to speak to a gun loving American to know that there will never be enough votes to swing it.
Perhaps seeing these TWO people gunned down (let's remember Mamamia, there was a camera man too that doesn't appear to get the same billing) is EXACTLY what people need to see.
Because they won't change if it doesn't hit a nerve with them in a raw form.