DENVER β Hours after she escaped the Columbine High School shooting, 14-year-old Missy Mendo slept between her parents in bed, still wearing the shoes she had on when she fled her math class. She wanted to be ready to run.
Twenty-five years later, and with Mendo now a mother herself, the trauma from that horrific day remains close on her heels.
It caught up to her when 60 people were shot dead in 2017 at a country music festival in Las Vegas, a city she visited a lot while working in the casino industry. Then again in 2022, when 19 students and two teachers were shot and killed in Uvalde, Texas.
Mendo was filling out her daughterβs pre-kindergarten application when news of the elementary school shooting broke. She read a few lines of a news story about Uvalde, then put her head down and cried.
βIt felt like nothing changed,β she recalls thinking.
Columbine High School is seen April 17 from the Columbine Memorial in Littleton, Colo.
In the quarter-century since two gunmen at Columbine shot and killed 12 fellow students and a teacher in suburban Denver β an attack that played out on live television and ushered in the modern era of school shootings β the traumas of that day have continued to shadow Mendo and others who were there.
Some needed years to view themselves as Columbine survivors since they were not physically wounded. Yet things like fireworks could still trigger disturbing memories. The aftershocks β often unacknowledged in the years before mental health struggles were more widely recognized β led to some survivors suffering insomnia, dropping out of school, or disengaging from their spouses or families.
Survivors and other members of the community plan to attend a candlelight vigil on the steps of the stateβs capitol Friday night, the eve of the shootingβs anniversary.
April is particularly hard for Mendo, 39, whose βbrain turns to mashed potatoesβ each year. She shows up at dentist appointments early, misplaces her keys, forgets to close the refrigerator door.
Missy Mendo, director of community outreach for The Rebels Project, which offers support to victims of mass shootings, is photographed April 12 in Denver.
She leans on therapy and the understanding of an expanding group of shooting survivors she met through The Rebels Project, a support group founded by other Columbine survivors after a 2012 shooting when a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in the nearby suburb of Aurora. Mendo started seeing a therapist after her childβs first birthday, at the urging of fellow survivor moms.
After she broke down over Uvalde, Mendo, a single parent, said she talked to her mom, took a walk to get some fresh air, then finished her daughterβs pre-kindergarten application.
βWas I afraid of her going into the public school system? Absolutely,β Mendo said of her daughter.
Researchers whoβve studied the long-term effects of gun violence in schools have quantified protracted struggles among survivors, including long-term academic effects like absenteeism and reduced college enrollment, and lower earnings later in life.
People visit the Columbine Memorial on Wednesday in Littleton, Colo.
βJust counting lives lost is kind of an incorrect way to capture the full cost of these tragedies,β said Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor in the Stanford University School of Medicineβs Department of Health Policy.
Mass killings have recurred with numbing frequency in the years since Columbine, with almost 600 attacks in which four or more people have died, not including the perpetrator, since 2006, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.
More than 80% of the 3,045 victims in those attacks were killed by a firearm.
Nationwide hundreds of thousands of people have been exposed to school shootings that are often not mass-casualty events but still traumatic, Rossin-Slater said. The impacts can last a lifetime, she added, resulting in βkind of a persistent, reduced potentialβ for survivors.
Those who were present at Columbine say the years since have given them time to learn more about what happened to them and how to cope with it.
Heather Martin is interviewedΒ April 11 in Aurora, Colo.
Kathy Zamora, left, comforts her friend Christine Medina, a sophomore at Columbine High School, after she escaped from the school when two gunmen entered the facility and went on a shooting rampage April 20, 1999, in the southwest Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo.
Heather Martin, now 42, was a Columbine senior in 1999. In college, she began crying during a fire drill, realizing later that a fire alarm had gone off for three hours when she and 60 other students hid in a barricaded office during the high school shooting. She couldnβt return to that class and was marked absent each time, and says she failed it after refusing to write a final paper on school violence, despite telling her professor of her experience at Columbine.
It took 10 years for her to see herself as a survivor, after she was invited back with the rest of the class of 1999 for an anniversary event. She saw fellow classmates having similar struggles and almost immediately decided to go back to college to become a teacher.
Martin, a co-founder of The Rebels Project, named after Columbineβs mascot, said 25 years has given her time to struggle and figure out how to work out of those struggles.
βI just know myself so well now and know how I respond to things and what might activate me and how I can bounce back and be OK. And most importantly I think I can recognize when I am not OK and when I do need to seek help,β she said.
Yes, it's getting worse: New data shows mass shootings are more frequent
Yes, it's getting worse: New data shows mass shootings are more frequent
Updated
This story was produced by The Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.
On Oct. 25, 2023, a gunman opened fire in Lewiston, Maine, ultimately killing 18 people and injuring 13 more at a bowling alley and a nearby bar. He was found dead after a two-day manhunt. Maine, which has one of the lowest homicide rates in the nation, remains in shock.Β
If it feels like U.S. mass shootings have become more frequent, that intuition remains correct, according to data analysis by The Marshall Project.Β
Under even one of the most conservative definitions of "mass shootings," in which a gunman slaughters four or more strangers in a public place, the number of these crimes has indeed been climbing in the last few years β and they have higher death tolls, as well.
Mass shootings account for just a fraction of the daily toll of firearm deaths in the U.S., where about 132 people died every day in acts of gun violence in 2022.
Our analysis is based on data through 2022 from The Violence Project, a nonprofit research group that uses a narrow definition of mass shootings adopted from the Congressional Research Service, which advises federal lawmakers.
Mass shootings have been on the rise steadily for the past 40 years
Updated
Thirty-three of these massacres occurred from 2018 through 2022, compared with 25 from 2013 through 2017, according to The Violence Project data. We compared five-year periods, rather than annual data, so we could more clearly see trends over time. A focus on yearly data would be skewed by 2020, when there were two mass shooting incidents, which researchers attribute to the COVID-19 lockdown.
Still, the latest five-year period saw more attacks than any other comparable timespan dating back to 1966 β an average of about 6.6 mass shootings per year since 2018.
The Violence Project defines mass shootings as single incidents in which four or more people are killed (not including the shooter), in public locations, such as schools, stores, or workplaces. It excludes murders that occur as a result of other crimes, such as domestic violence, robbery and gang violence.
At least seven mass shootings so far in 2023 fit this definition:
- Monterey Park, California: 11 dead, 9 injured.
- Half Moon Bay, California: 7 dead, 1 injured.
- Nashville, Tennessee: 6 dead.
- Louisville, Kentucky: 5 dead, 8 injured.
- Allen, Texas: 8 dead, 7 injured.
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 5 dead, 2 injured.
- Lewiston, Maine: 18 dead, 13 injured.
This means 2023 is on par with the number of mass shootings in recent years. The Violence Project counted eight mass shootings in 2021, and seven in 2022.Β
While shooting incidents show a gradual upward trend, the number of those killed is rising at an alarming rate
Updated
As mass shootings in the U.S. reached a record high, so did the number of deaths and injuries. From 2018 to 2022, perpetrators killed 257 people β close to the 266 fatalities in the five-year period that ended in 2017, and significantly more than any previous period.
The rise in deaths and injuries from 2013 through 2017 was mostly due to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. At a Las Vegas music festival in 2017, a gunman with multiple assault weapons killed at least 60 people. Over 850 people were injured, including scores hurt in a stampede, according to The Violence Project.Β
Injuries have likewise risen significantly; one contributing factor: assault weapons
Updated
Our analysis shows that in the past five years, assault-style weapons have been used in half of mass shootings. Prior to 2013, they were used in one-third or fewer of all mass shootings.
There is no national, legal definition of a "mass shooting." Several organizations track this form of gun violence, but use different yardsticks.
In 2024, The Marshall Project will update the charts included in this article with full data from 2023. For more on mass shootings and how they are defined, a full analysis from 2022 is available.Β
