Community gathers to heal after King Soopers shooting in special Boulder City Council meeting - Longmont Times-Call

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Fairview High School educator Amy Nelson remembers the day her student Denny Stong learned he got a job at King Soopers. After months of filling out applications and searching for jobs, it was a huge accomplishment for the graduating senior. The pair celebrated.

On Monday, when Nelson learned that a man opened fire on the south Boulder King Soopers where her former student now worked, she felt sick. Her fears ultimately were confirmed: 20-year-old Stong was among the 10 people killed in Monday’s mass shooting, the deadliest in Boulder’s history.

Nelson was one of dozens of city officials, politicians, community members and faith leaders who gathered virtually on Wednesday to speak at a special Boulder City Council meeting meant to offer resources, to discuss next steps and to begin the collective healing process.

As she recounted her relationship with Stong and her sadness about what happened at King Soopers on Monday, Nelson couldn’t help but cry.

“Know that these tears are the love that I have for this community and the pain that I feel and I know that we’re all feeling,” she said.

“This felt and still feels like too much,” Nelson later added.

During Wednesday’s special meeting, community leaders urged people to care for themselves and for others in the community. The healing process will be a long one, many said.

Mayor Sam Weaver took time to honor the families of the victims and the first responders, one of whom “paid the ultimate price.” Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley, the first to arrive on scene, died in the shooting.

“(The first responders) saved lives and they helped apprehend the suspect which is, of course, critical to our sense of closure and justice,” Weaver said.

Pearce Lembitz, a fifth-grader at Bixby School in south Boulder, said that the shooting never should have happened and that it could have been anyone.

“The victims could have been any one of us, even my mom who does her grocery shopping before she picks me up from school at 3:15,” she said.

This is something Gov. Jared Polis referenced, too, when he spoke earlier in the meeting. Polis, a Boulder native who still lives in the city, said that grocery stores are a hub of the community, a place where people have an expectation of safety.

“That’s why for many of us this attack feels so personal, that it could be any of us at any store at any time,” he said.

Before Wednesday’s special meeting, the fence outside the King Soopers was lined with flowers, posters and candles, while residents and even visitors from out of town came to pay their respects.

The memorial served as a way for many to begin the healing journey that city officials hoped to kickstart during the special City Council meeting.

Jacqueline Velasco graduated from Fairview High just a year behind Stong, the youngest of the victims. And like many Fairview students, she spent a lot of time in the shopping center.

“We came here like every day,” she said. “Before school, after school.”

But there is one high school gathering she remembers in particular, now. In 2018, Velasco and her Fairview High classmates walked out in protest of the shootings at Parkland High School in Florida, and they ended up in the same King Soopers parking lot that was filled with cars that had been shot on Wednesday.

“We marched out because we didn’t want that to happen here,” she said. “Now here we are three years later, and it has happened. You feel hopeless, like nothing has changed.”

Staff Writer Mitchell Byars contributed to this report.

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