Girl Who Survived School Shooting Unsatisfied With Trump's Answer

TOWNVILLE, SC — More than a year after the only boy she had ever kissed and wanted to marry someday was shot and killed in an elementary playground shooting in Townville, South Carolina, Ava Rose Olson sat down and wrote President Trump a letter. She is still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and can’t erase what had happened on Sept. 28, 2016, from her mind.

Ava was a first-grader at Townville Elementary School when 14-year-old Jesse Osborne, a former student there, allegedly shot and killed his father, then drove a pickup to the playground, where he opened fire. Jacob Hall, 6, died three days later. Ava’s first-grade teacher was wounded, as were two other students.

Due to the trauma, Ava is homeschooled. But she worries about her younger brother, Cameron, who was also at the school that day and still attends classes there. Ava's worry about her brother's safety drove her to sit down last summer and appeal to the president to keep Cameron and millions of other American school children safe from gun violence, The Washington Post reported.

“Dear Mr. President,” she wrote. “I heard and saw it all happen and I was very scared. My best friend, Jacob, was shot and died. That made me very sad. I loved him and was going to marry him one day. I hate guns. One ruined my life and took my best friend.

“I don’t want that to ever happen again,” she continued, underlining the word “ever” for emphasis. “Are you going to keep kids safe? How are you going to keep us safe? Please don’t let any more bad people get guns and hurt kids. ...

“Please,” she concluded, “keep kids safe from guns.”

Trump responded to Ava’s letter in December. He thanked her for the letter and said she was “very brave” to share the story.

“Mrs. Trump and I are so sorry to hear of the loss of your friend, Jacob,” the president wrote. “Our prayers are with you, your family, your school, and Jacob’s family.

“Schools are places where children learn and grow with their friends. Their halls should be free of fear. It is my goal as president to make sure that children grow up in safe environments, giving them the best opportunity to realize their full potential. I will continue to focus on protecting Americans an improve the safety of our Nation.”

Ava, now 8, was initially impressed the president had taken time to write back, her mother, Mary Olsen, told The Post. But as time passed, she shifted her focus from the fact that he’d written to the substance what he had written. He hadn’t actually answered her questions about what he was going to do to bring about change, she told her mother.

So she picked up her pencil again. On Jan. 8, Ava wrote another letter to the president, offering the perspective of a student who lived through a school shooting and remains haunted by it.

“I sometimes still think about that day in my head thinking it will happen again,” she wrote. “If you have the time, I have some ideas to help keep kids and schools safe. Sometimes people who live through a school shooting have better ideas.”

She acknowledged her six-point plan will cost money. Among them is that schools be designed so the playground is surrounded by buildings — a fortress to protect kids when they’re outside playing during recess. She also wants more resources to help people understand what it’s like for a kid like her who witnesses such carnage, and for counselors to talk to troubled kids before they commit gun violence.

According to reports, Jesse Osborne had been bullied when he was a student at Townville Elementary School. A hearing is scheduled for Feb. 12 to determine if Osborne will be tried as a juvenile or an adult.

Fourteen school shootings have occurred so far in 2018 on campuses across the United States, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, whose numbers are current through Feb. 1. School shootings occur at a rate of about one a week, The New York Times reported. Since the deadly Columbine, Colorado, school shooting in 1999, at least 265 K-12 through college students have been killed in shootings and at least 385 others have been injured, according to online reports, and that does not include suicides, accidental shootings and gun-related assaults that occurred after school.

Since Columbine, more than 150,000 students in at least 170 primary or secondary schools have been exposed to gun violence, The Post reported.

Trump’s gun-control position has shifted over the years. In the 1990s, when he first suggested he might run for president, he was open to some restrictions on guns, but as a candidate he said the 2016 presidential election was a referendum in support of an unrestricted Second Amendment. As president, he signed a bill that makes it easier for people with severe mental illnesses to buy guns. That law repealed Obama-era rules put in place after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in which 20 children and six adults were killed. Those rules required federal agencies to report relevant records to the national background check system.

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