Shooting survivor: ‘We have not found the moral will’
Texas tragedy brings back haunting memories of 1988 Laurie Dann attack
For Phil Andrew, last week’s mass shooting in Texas brought back terrible memories and frustration that these types of horrific events continue to occur.
In May 1988, he was 20 and at home in Winnetka when a disturbed woman entered Winnetka’s Hubbard Woods Elementary School, killing one child and wounding five others.
The woman, Laurie Dann, then ran into a neighboring house where she took members of the Andrew family hostage, shooting Phil Andrew before she committed suicide.
Andrew survived and has watched in despair the series of mass shootings since, with the latest one being last week at Uvalde, Texas’ Robb Elementary School as 19 children and two teachers were murdered.
“It really is devastating to know that over the course of 34 years we have not found the moral will, and we have not seen the moral leadership to fix the things that need to be fixed to prevent this from happening again,” Andrew said.
Today, Andrew lives in the North Shore and, after working as an FBI agent for 21 years, is the principal of the Pax Group, a crisis and conflict management consulting firm.
Based on his collective experience, Andrew believes there are ways to prevent additional shootings starting with intensive universal background checks and age limits on who can purchase firearms.
“He bought that gun legally,” Andrew said of the shooter in Uvalde, who was 18. “Consistent with data from other mass shootings,
most perpetrators do not get their guns illegally. Allowing assault weapons in the hands of teenagers in uncontrolled circumstances is foolish. It is just a highrisk proposition.”
Andrew also wants to see more states enact so-called “red flag” laws, which allow authorities or family members to temporarily take firearms from people deemed dangerous after petitioning the courts. Many states already have these types of laws on the books.
“Folks that are serious about public safety are doing this. Folks that just want political talk, they aren’t doing this,” Andrew said.
He is also calling for additional coordination between schools, local governments and law enforcement to try to identify any student who may be troubled and could pose a risk to themselves or others.
“Potentially an A student who suddenly gets three Ds and has an attendance issue that could mean something is going on,” Andrew said, using one example.
He said in those cases, school officials need to reach out to that student to see what is going on in their lives and establish a connection as a possible intervention.
On a similar realm, Andrew said any indication of a child celebrating or taking pictures with a firearm needs to be immediately reported and followed by a threat assessment.
As for the much-criticized way local law enforcement handled the shooting in Uvalde, Andrew offered an empathetic tone.
“As a law enforcement officer, they would have done everything they could have with the information they had. That is going to be a hard thing to live with. Being a cop is hard enough, being involved in a critical incident where there is so much horror and devastation is absolutely traumatic. And then living with the potential you could have done more to mitigate had you had better information or better training, that is a really difficult thing to live with,” he said. “My heart goes out to them because they are going to have to find positive ways to live with that. It may be like I did and try to find ways to make sure it will never happen again.”