Senseless. Tragic. And oh so random.
It’s difficult to describe what happened in Farmington Monday, other than any town’s worst nightmare.
“I don’t even know what to say in an event like this,” Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe said Monday night. “How do you address it?”
There are so many unanswered questions about what would possess an 18-year-old Farmington High School student to go on a rampage and randomly shoot at people and cars over a quarter-mile stretch of a usually quiet, middle-class neighborhood in the heart of Farmington.
The shooter had a full adult life ahead of him, as did the 21-year-old man who snuck into nearby Aztec High School on Dec. 7, 2017, and shot and killed two students before killing himself.
Monday’s shooter armed himself with at least three different weapons before fatally shooting three people and injuring six others, including two responding police officers, before he was stopped and killed by authorities.
The three people killed were all women over the age of 70. Two of those shot and killed were a mother-daughter in their 90s and 70s.
So senseless, so tragic, and so random.
Farmington has had it rough lately. The remote and rugged northwestern New Mexico town made national news just last month when Farmington police responded to a domestic disturbance call at the wrong house and shot and killed homeowner Robert Dodson as he opened his door around 11:30 p.m. with a handgun in his hand.
New Mexicans want answers, to somehow understand how a young man could turn his guns on innocent victims. A thorough police investigation will hopefully yield some answers, but we’ll probably never fully understand how this happened.
“We are doing the best that we can to … look at the evidence to see if we can figure out what the motivation was,” Hebbe said. “But at this point, it appears to be purely random.”
The whole state is mourning. Our hearts are heavy and our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, some still in the hospital, and their families.
Now is also the time to remind ourselves how fortunate we are to have law enforcement officers so brave and dedicated that they run toward the gunfire, not away. They no doubt saved many lives Monday in that previously quiet neighborhood in Farmington.
This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
