Student, grandfather share nightmarish bond
A student survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in a closet — just like her grandfather did to escape a 1949 shooting rampage in New Jersey.
Carly Novell tweeted a photo and said she hid in a closet just like her grandfather, Charles Cohen, did nearly 70 years ago when a gunman killed his family.
“This is my grandpa. When he was 12 years old, he hid in a closet while his family was murdered during the first mass shooting in America,” Novell wrote. “Almost 70 years later, I also hid in a closet from a murderer. These events shouldn’t be repetitive. Something has to change. #douglasstrong.”
Howard Unruh gunned down 13 people, including Cohen’s parents and paternal grandmother, during what was called his “Walk of Death” through Camden. Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he spent the rest of his life in a state psychiatric hospital. He confessed to the killings but was never tried. He died in 2009.
Cohen’s daughter, Lori Greenberg, said her father didn’t like talking about the attack with his family.
“He wanted to live the rest of his life and not let this define him,” Greenberg said. “But I think not talking about it and letting it be repressed is much worse.”
She says her niece Carly met with counselors and is “doing OK” after Wednesday’s shooting left 17 dead.
“She’s a remarkable young lady, but this is hard on her,” Greenberg said. “Carly did lose a friend. A friend of hers saw two people shot dead.”
Novell told the Huffington Post that she didn’t even learn about the Camden killings until after her grandfather died, also in 2009.
“But family was so incredibly important to him because of what happened,” she said. “He wasn’t as lucky as me.”
In her interview with the Huffington Post, she described her own experience.
“We were all squished together in the closet and I was comforting my friends while they were having panic attacks. I didn’t know when I would get out. I just knew that I had to survive and I had to make sure everyone was OK,” she said.