John Woodrow Cox Profile picture
Apr 5, 2021 20 tweets 8 min read Read on X
Four years ago, I met two extraordinary children. Ava was 7, from rural South Carolina. Tyshaun was 8, from Southeast DC. They didn't know each other or have much in common, but gun violence had ruined both of their lives. This is the story of how they became best friends. (1/)
One afternoon when Ava was in first grade, she walked outside for recess just as a teenager with a gun pulled up in a truck. He opened fire on the playground. Ava dropped her chocolate cupcake and ran.

The shooter killed the boy Ava loved. His name was Jacob. He was 6. (2/)
A few weeks before Jacob was shot, Ava wrote him a note.
“Come play with me please,” she scribbled in pencil. “You can play with my cats. Do you want to get married when you come? My mom will make us lunch.”
Ava called him “Jakey.” He was the only boy she’d ever kissed. (3/)
At Jacob’s funeral, his miniature gray casket was topped with yellow chrysanthemums and a Ninja Turtles figurine. He was dressed in a Batman costume.
Ava couldn’t bear to look at him.
“He’s not really dead, is he?” she whispered to her mother.
“Yes,” her mom said. “He is.” (4/)
Ava’s trauma and loss consumed her. She was angry and afraid and sad. She started hitting herself and yanking out her eyelashes.
She recorded her anguish in her journal:
“I can’t stop feeling mad.”
“No one ever listens to me.”
“I hate guns. I hate that they ruin my life!” (5/)
On a cold morning 6 months after the school shooting in South Carolina, a man in DC was shot five times in a car. That was Tyshaun’s dad, Andrew. Ty wrote him a note in the hospital. “Dad I hope you are ok,” he scribbled, promising to “give up any thing on my body for you.” (6/)
That Sunday, Tyshaun thought of their last weekend together. They had seen “The LEGO Batman Movie,” eaten chicken-flavored instant ramen noodles, Tyshaun’s favorite. They had danced to “Juju on That Beat.” (7/)
That afternoon, his mother got a call. When she hung up, she sat on the couch and held his hands as he stood in front of her. She looked him in the eyes.
“Your father, he died today,” she said, and without a word, Tyshaun slumped to the floor. (8/)
At Jacob’s funeral, his miniature gray casket was topped with yellow chrysanthemums and a Ninja Turtles figurine. He was dressed in a Batman costume.
Ava couldn’t bear to look at him.
“He’s not really dead, is he?” she whispered to her mother.
“Yes,” her mom said. “He is.” (4/)
@ClickingKen Ava’s trauma and loss consumed her. She was angry and afraid and sad. She started hitting herself and yanking out her eyelashes.
She recorded her anguish in her journal:
“I can’t stop feeling mad.”
“No one ever listens to me.”
“I hate guns. I hate that they ruin my life!” (5/)
On a cold morning 6 months after the school shooting in South Carolina, a man in DC was shot five times in a car. That was Tyshaun’s dad, Andrew. Ty wrote him a note in the hospital. “Dad I hope you are ok,” he scribbled, promising to “give up any thing on my body for you.” (6/)
That Sunday, Tyshaun thought of their last weekend together. They had seen “The LEGO Batman Movie,” eaten chicken-flavored instant ramen noodles, Tyshaun’s favorite. They had danced to “Juju on That Beat.” (7/)
That afternoon, his mother got a call. When she hung up, she sat on the couch and held his hands as he stood in front of her. She looked him in the eyes.
“Your father, he died today,” she said, and without a word, Tyshaun slumped to the floor. (8/)
Up in South Carolina, Ava’s mom, Mary, read the story I wrote about Tyshaun for the Post, and when Ava noticed her getting emotional, she asked why. Mary told her a bit about Tyshaun and showed her this picture. Ava decided Tyshaun looked like he needed a friend. (9/)
“I saw your picture and would like to be your penpal,” Ava wrote. “I get sad and mad sometimes too. I am 7 years old. I am in 1st grade. I used to go to Townville Elementary School. I don’t anymore because something scary happened there...Do you like ice cream? I love chocolate!”
“Hi my name is Tyshaun and I am 8,” he wrote back. “I heard about your school. I hope you are having a bless day. Stay strong I’m praying for you. Sure I’ll be your pin pal.” (11/)
On and on the letters went. Tyshaun sent Ava a rainbow-colored stuffed bear; Ava sent Tyshaun miniature polyurethane “squishy” toys she squeezed when she was feeling stressed. Then they started FaceTiming, too. In each other they found friendship, but also something more. (12/)
“We went through the same thing,” Tyshaun told me, “losing somebody that we care about, and we like to chat a lot, and we both know how each other feel when we get emotional and stuff.”
I tell the rest of their story in a new book, CHILDREN UNDER FIRE. Ty and Ava haven't recovered from their trauma. Both still struggle. But they have each other, and amid a gun violence epidemic that's made hope hard to find, their bond gives me some. /end
harpercollins.com/products/child…
If you'd like to hear me talk about Ava, Tyshaun and the other kids whose stories I tell in CHILDREN UNDER FIRE, I'll be joining the great @ddale8 for a virtual conversation on April 19 at 7 p.m. You can register here to listen in and get a signed copy:
phoenixbooks.biz/event/children…

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More from @JohnWoodrowCox

Dec 13, 2022
For Sandy Hook's 10th anniversary, four elementary school shooting survivors told me their stories.

The oldest—52—was shot in 1979. Most people have no idea what happened to him.

The youngest—10—hid under a table in Uvalde, watching his friends die. (1/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/…
Cam Miller was 10 when a teenage girl opened fire outside his school 43 years ago. One bullet went straight through him, an inch from his heart.
"I would wake up scared that she would be in my house... I never slept through the night for years." (2/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/…
Cam has spent more than half his life since pleading with parole boards not to release her:
"When I first started going... I had an expectation of, 'Hey, I’m gonna receive an apology today.' That never happened. I don’t understand why she doesn’t look at me." (3/)
Read 12 tweets
Oct 25, 2022
It had been a perfect day for Caitlyne Gonzales. The Uvalde survivor saw Beto O'Rourke, one of her gun-safety heroes, speak. She took a selfie with him, got free shirts, ate fried chicken after.

Then, on the way home, police lights flashed behind her family's car.
A thread: Image
Three black SUVs, driven by Texas state troopers, blocked them into a parking lot. Caitlyne, sitting in the back seat between her mom and sister, clenched her teeth and crossed her arms.
“Oh my God,” her sister said.
“Shush,” Caitlyne instructed.
She was terrified. (2/) Image
It was three days before school started, and I'd spent all summer with Caitlyne. She knew the police took 77 minutes to confront the gunman at Robb and, like many people in Uvalde, Caitlyne deeply resented them for it. Her friends died, she believed, because they failed. (3/) Image
Read 16 tweets
Oct 24, 2022
After years of writing about school shootings, this summer, in Uvalde, was the most extraordinary experience of my career.
And the most extraordinary day was Sept. 1. It began an hour before one survivor, Caitlyne Gonzales, met her fifth-grade teachers for the first time. (1/) Image
I watched Caitlyne pore through YouTube videos about survivors from other schools.
“He’s now in a wheelchair,” she said about a boy who was shot three times.
“She’s a cheerleader,” she said about a girl who had seen students dying in their own blood. (2/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/…
When she reached a video about the four teenagers gunned down at Oxford High in Michigan last year, she pointed at a picture of one victim smiling in a field of flowers: “She was 14. She was the youngest.” (3/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/…
Read 15 tweets
Jun 13, 2022
I've been writing about school shootings for more than five years. Never have I witnessed a clearer or more unsettling illustration of the permanent damage they cause than I did at Saturday's March for Our Lives rally, after a brief moment of panic in the crowd. (thread/)
Four days prior, I'd set out to chronicle the week through the eyes of two survivors. Sam Fuentes, from Parkland, famously vomited on stage during her 2018 speech. She arrived to DC with shrapnel in her leg—and serious doubt that anything would change.(2/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/…
The other, Zoe Touray, is from Oxford, where four of her schoolmates were shot dead. She arrived in DC hopeful, struggling to imagine the people in charge of this country ignoring the pleas of determined survivors who'd endured so much suffering. (3/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/…
Read 9 tweets
May 26, 2022
Ever wonder why America:
Can't stop school shootings?
Doesn't know more about mass shooters?
Doesn't make safer guns?
Knows so little about an epidemic that kills 40,000+ people a year?

Our government's ignorance is no accident. It's the results of a decades-old plot. (thread)
Imagine for a moment if—mid-pandemic—Congress barred the CDC from studying covid because *one lawmaker* rejected the proven research. Hard to believe, right?

That's what happened with gun violence 25+ years ago. It's cost thousands of lives since. Most people have no idea. (2/)
I investigated this catastrophic decision for my book. It began with an NRA scheme, and what followed was sad and infuriating, yes, but the story is complicated: it includes betrayal, an extraordinarily unlikely friendship and lessons on how obstinate thinking can change. (3/)
Read 16 tweets
Apr 7, 2021
Getting some angry emails about my new book from gun owners who assume that any coverage of gun violence — even when focused on how to spare kids from it — is, intrinsically, an attempt to take their firearms away. It’s a notion pushed by gun lobbyists. It's also a lie. (thread)
First, to debunk some myths they keep sending:
"It's the person, not the gun": Nope. Americans aren't uniquely evil. Exorbitantly more people are killed by guns here because we have exorbitantly more guns—as many as 400 million—and laws that are less effective at regulating them.
"Gun laws never stop criminals from getting guns": Universal background checks would, among many things, upend black markets. If gun laws make no difference, why do traffickers travel hundreds of miles to states with weak laws to buy guns to sell in states with strong laws?
Read 9 tweets

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