A woman with short blond hair and eyes red from crying knelt before the door of Dayton’s Hole in the Wall bar, just a short walk from where a 24-year-old shooter opened fire on downtown residents. She placed a bouquet of roses on the bar’s doorstep, wept, and then silently walked away.
A few blocks away, Airiana Camp, 22, wrestled with what she had seen and heard. The shooting left nine dead and dozens wounded. “Bodies in the street covered up with white bags. Blood everywhere,” she told the Detroit News. She later discovered that her close friend Lois Oglesby was in one of those bags.
“She had two children,” Camp said of Oglesby, who was 27-years-old. “She just had a little baby girl; she went to the bar to get away, to get some fresh air. I keep hoping she’ll wake up in the hospital and tell me she’s OK.”
Dayton residents grieved the loss of friends and family this weekend, struggling to make sense of the needless violence that had taken their loved ones. The Dayton, Ohio mass shooting was only hours after the shooting in El Paso, Texas, which left 31 dead and more than two dozen injured. Thirty innocent lives total lost within 13 hours.
Camp said she was at Newcom’s Tavern on Saturday night when the bar closed its doors and told its patrons they weren’t allowed to leave. “We didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “They just told us we weren’t allowed to leave.” At 6 a.m., the bar gave Camp and the other patrons the all-clear. She walked outside and shuddered to recall what she saw. “There was blood outside all these places,” she said, pointing to a man hosing off the sidewalk. “He’s washing off the blood now.”
Thousands of people gathered in Dayton’s Oregon District, holding candles, flowers, and signs that read “Dayton strong.” Several residents wore T-shirts bearing messages of hope, such as “Live for Life,” “Hope for All,” and “Life is for Life.”
“We have been inducted into the select group of cities that have had this type of tragedy,” Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said at the vigil. “But I have no doubt that tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that this will continue to be a place to celebrate.”
Senseless violence often leaves us asking why, and unfortunately, there isn’t a good answer. Brutally taking the life of another human being requires a detachment from humanity itself, and that’s something few will ever understand. Perhaps that’s a good thing. We must confront evil and even mourn it, but true healing comes when we choose to grasp the hands of others, stand up, and leave evil behind.
—By Kaylee McGhee
