Recently, three people that all have connections to mass school shootings have taken their lives. Two of the recent suicides are survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. These students were Sydney Aiello and a person who has not been named. The third is a parent of a child that was killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting, Jeremy Richman. The survival of these traumatic events is the only link between the three victims.

Jeremy Richman, father to a victim of the Sandy Hook School shooting.

The two students in Parkland were strong advocates and were outspoken in their community after the shooting. They used their experiences to try to help others. According to CNN, these suicides are a “sobering reminder that they are not only young advocates, but also trauma victims and gun violence loss survivors.”  

Senior, Devin Murphy, shares that “these suicides are really horrible. They were doing really good things with their experiences but it ended up ruining them.”

The father of the Sandy Hook victim has used the massacre to start the Avielle Foundation, a nonprofit organization in his daughter’s memory. Richman told CNN in 2013 how “Every day we need to get out of bed. And Jen and I just came up with a just beautiful idea to get us out of bed. Every day we try to find something of beauty, something that makes you feel the world’s a good place. And every day we want to make sure we try to, really strive to give back something of beauty, something to the world.”  

Senior, Sean Piepmeier says that “it seems unfair that so many bad things have happened to these people. They can’t catch a break and just keep pulling the short stick in life.”

These situations have been rough for the families surrounding the victims of shootings. They dealt with the grief and trauma of losing people in the shootings, and are now dealing with the suicides that have occurred.