USC murder-suicide terrifies parents – like me

Word broke in the news business around 1 p.m. Thursday of a shooting at the public health building at the University of South Carolina, and within seconds it was not a news story.

It was breath that would not come.

Lungs that would not fill.

A powerless father who always had some measure of control, until now.

Frantic texts.

My daughter attends USC’s School of Public Health.

All parents know about the rising cost of college. We gnash our teeth over how to pay for it, but many of us don’t know our child’s schedule – what room, in what building, on what day they have a particular class.

But in a flash on Thursday, what once seemed important – money and debt – did not matter, because nobody knew if anybody was alive or dead.

And my kid was right there.

Because it is 2015, the bumbling father – who can barely make a phone call – immediately sent text messages to the teen who lives on her cellphone.

No answer.

The wife, always and forever the foundation and strength of my family (and most families), is demanding answers by text and by phone calls.

Still, nobody knows.

Thousands of parents, tens of thousands, from Allendale to Abbeville and Rock Hill to Ridgeway – all doing the same thing. Cops who have kids at the school for future doctors and dentists, including two right here in York, stopped what they were doing just like anybody else.

Thanks to social media, the second daughter at the College of Charleston knows that there’s been a shooting at USC, but she can’t get her sister on her cellphone. She is waiting for the father to find out more, because he is in the news business and he should be able to find out.

But he knows nothing.

Word leaks out that two people have been shot, but nobody knows who. The powerless father, 80 miles away, can only charge into his work like a bull, because thinking of a daughter in a building where there is without question now one or two dead is not possible.

The father writes a story about an armed robber in Rock Hill telling his victim, “I just got out of prison so I don’t want to shoot anyone,” as he wonders who the hell shot who in the same building where his daughter is taking a science class for some of the brightest kids in America.

A gray-haired editor, who for the first time in memory appears to have a pumping heart, walks through the door. He looks at the columnist, who makes the editor’s life a daily trial of shouts and threats and fights, and quietly says, “Do what you have to do.”

The father looks up with a grimace from a phone call, as he is asking cops in every place he knows about other robberies and crimes and joys and dreams – but he is also checking to see who is dead, if it is a girl he taught to ride a bike and loves more than he loves being alive himself.

The cops in York got text alerts that said “shots fired” and “lockdown” and found out their kids were fine, but still they worried about all other kids and parents.

A father who is himself terrified of guns. Who gave his daughter a can of pepper spray and instructions to be safe. Who can’t sleep at night because so many news stories have gun-toting maniacs who maim and kill for no reason.

And seemingly everybody except him has a gun.

But a columnist in Rock Hill or a cop in York cannot help children in Columbia who are rushing through life with joy and purpose and greatness – all of which the fathers worry will be cut down by a bullet.

The State newspaper is chiming in with more details, but it takes a while.

After what seems like an eternity, the cops say the threat is over. It is a murder-suicide in the public health building.

Finally, the father’s phone makes a chirping sound.

A text message to a frantic mother, sister and father. The father who brags about the kid, even though he had little to do with her success because she is smart like the mother and looks like the mother and is wonderful like the mother.

“I’m in lab guys I’m good.”

At last, everybody breathed.

Before the breath was out, though, there was more worry – this time for all those other students and parents whose breath had not yet come after sending their daughters and sons to a college where books cost $200 apiece for public health classes.

But on a cold Thursday in February, nobody worried about the cost of learning. They only worried about bullets and guns and death, because the public health building at USC became the public death building.

This story was originally published February 6, 2015 at 1:57 PM with the headline "USC murder-suicide terrifies parents – like me."