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Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway, I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. It's been 10 years since the rampage of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history. 26 people were murdered that day including 20 children between the ages of six and seven. We spoke with the parent of one of those children.
Nicole Hockley: My name is Nicole Hockley and I'm one of the co-founders and CEOs at Sandy Hook Promise.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Nicole's six-year-old son Dylan was shot and killed that day, December 14th, 2012.
Nicole Hockley: He was a very special little boy. He was always smiling. He had a very sing-songy littleton voice so that a lot of times people couldn't always understand him. His big brother Jake and myself and his dad, we could always understand him. He had a very infectious giggle like I think a lot of kids do, but obviously I'm a very biased mother and I thought he had the best laugh that I'd ever heard in my entire life. It was just music to my ears. He only was here for six years, but a lot of life and love in those six years.
Melissa Harris-Perry: A day started like any other. Nicole got the kids up, gave them their breakfast and took them up the driveway to wait for the school bus. Then she went to an exercise class and she missed a call from a friend.
Nicole Hockley: Then she called back and she said there's been a shooting at our school. I collapsed to the floor. One of my friends bundled me into a car and drove me there as close as we could get. As we were getting closer, it was just cars everywhere and people running towards the firehouse which is at the end of the driveway to the school. We couldn't get any closer so I just got out and started running too, and it was absolute.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Nicole eventually found her son, Jake , who was then in the third grade and she looked around for Dylan, but she couldn't find him or his class. Nicole and some other parents were then taken to another room.
Nicole Hockley: I've heard some parents say at that moment they realized what was happening. I was clueless or in denial or we'd heard by that time that there'd been a shooting, but had no idea the scale, whether it was a shooting with injuries, whether it was just a firearm going off on the school grounds, whether one person had been shot. I just assumed Dylan is in hiding somewhere and he's with his special education assistant Mrs. Murphy, because she wasn't there either. Your mind can't go to the place of my child is dead. It's just not possible.
Melissa Harris-Perry: That night, Nicole and her family stayed at a friend's house. Her road was closed because the shooter had lived across the street from them.
Nicole Hockley: We stayed there that night with Jake. I still remember when Ian, my husband, told Jake that Dylan had been killed. Jake just howled. It was a sound no human should make, and it just broke him. He's probably been broken ever since. I know I am.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Before the Sandy Hook shooting, Nicole didn't know much about gun violence, but today she's an advocate for gun violence prevention. In the aftermath of the shooting, she and another parent of a Sandy Hook victim, Mark Barden, started an organization called Sandy Hook Promise.
Nicole Hockley: At Sandy Hook Promise, our mission is to ensure that no student ever bases the devastation of a school shooting. We're really working to end school shootings in our country and we do that by educating and empowering youth with how they can prevent violence before it occurs.
Melissa Harris-Perry: One of their flagship programs is called Say Something, which teaches students to recognize one warning signs of someone at risk of hurting others.
Nicole Hockley: What does it look like when someone might be going into crisis? What does it look like when someone is considering harm to themselves or harm to someone else? Then how do you tell someone about that? Not to be a snitch or to get them in trouble, but to get them help. It's really about saying something to ensure that someone gets the help that they need and not just trust that someone else is going to take care of it. Really teaching kids how to be upstanders and lean in to help each other rather than just passively think that someone else is going to take care of it.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Nicole says that empowering students is key to making schools safer, as is policy change, but while we wait for the latter, she says it's important to remember those we've lost.
Nicole Hockley: To honor those who have been injured or died in a school shooting or a mass shooting. It's important to say their names. It's important to realize that we have a public health epidemic here in terms of gun violence, but if we just talk about numbers and stats, it diminishes the humanity of this is a family that's no longer whole. This is a person that should be here that no longer is here, and this is something that we could have taken action to prevent.
Melissa Harris-Perry: His name was Dylan Hockley, he was six years old. Our thanks to Nicole Hockley, a CEO and founder of Sandy Hook Promise and the mother of Dylan. There's nothing harder than this kind of loss, and we're grateful that Nicole gave us the time and continues to fight for her son.
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