A Tragic Part of Neighborhood History

Who knew that when the year started and I said that we would have lots of adventures, that this shooting would be one of those things that will make up 2012.

On Wednesday night, around 9pm, I was looking on Facebook and saw that someone in my ward had remarked about the amount of sirens they had been hearing. I had wondered about that and as I scrolled down the comments, I saw that someone wrote that a shooting was in progress. I quickly googled KSL News to see what was going on. All they knew was that a shooting was in progress on the other side of our church building, about two neighborhood blocks from our house.

I went to the back door to look out the window and saw police flashing lights. Immediately I thanked Heavenly Father that this hadn't happened hours earlier while we were having scouts right next door to where the shooting was. Unfortunately, a Relief Society activity was going on in the building. I had completely forgotten about it and I've never been happier that I missed an activity but I worried about the ladies that were in the building. The women were basically locked in the building by the SWAT team and they couldn't leave until the SWAT team came back and gave them 10 minutes to get home.

Ambulances were going passed. Helicopters were flying overhead. All I could do was refreshing the news station page trying to find out what was happening.

The next morning, the first thing I did was read the news page. One policemen, Jared Francom, had been shot and killed by my church building. 5 others were injured and in the hospital. The gunmen was also shot and in the hospital.

This really could have happened in any neighborhood. It was an unstable man with a gun. He made some very horrible choices and ruined his life and ended another man's. This isn't a bad neighborhood, just like Virginia Tech isn't a bad university. Wednesday night, I was scared by what was happening so close to my home. But by morning, I realized that no matter where you live, stuff like this can happen. There are unstable people everywhere you go. You can only trust that Heavenly Father has a plan.

I want to record this because, this is an online journal. This happened in our lives, near our home that we have created in Ogden. It breaks our hearts that this could happen anywhere but it makes it hard knowing that it could happen to our town.

Hopefully the stories of 2012 will also include some extreme joy along with the tragedy. Our prayers and our thoughts go out to the families of the officers who fought to keep our neighborhood safe.

If you want to read news about this event, you can go here.