All About Change - Losing a Child to America’s Gun Violence – Nicole Hockley

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Trigger warning: This episode contains conversation about gun violence, child loss, and suicide. If you or anyone else you know is dealing with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. And always remember: if you see something, say something. To find your state's Department of Homeland Security reporting number, visit https://www.dhs.gov/see-something-say-something/how-to-report-suspicious-activity.   On December 14, 2012, Nicole Hockley dropped her 6-year-old son Dylan off at school, thinking their day would be like any other. Then a shooter entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and opened fire, murdering 26 children and staff members--including Dylan. Following this unimaginable tragedy, Nicole established Sandy Hook Promise, an organization dedicated to preventing school shootings.  Join us for Nicole’s story of grief, resilience, and courage and how she transformed tragedy into hope.  Please find a transcription of this episode here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I want to let you know about some exciting changes we're working on for the podcast. We've been dedicated to building a platform for inclusion, and as the world has evolved, our podcast focus is evolving with it. Life is about change, the ability to act on what you believe in with courage and conviction. Please stay tuned, but in the meantime, we need your help to reach new listeners. Share, retweet, post, and give us a review on Apple Podcasts. Help us share the incredible devotion of the people we showcase. Help us inspire change.

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And now, on with the show. Hi, I'm Jay Ruderman, and welcome to All Inclusive, stories of activism, change, and courage. This is all wrong. I say put mental health first because if you don't... This generation of Americans has already had enough. I stand before you not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen. In each episode, we bring you in-depth and intimate conversations with inspiring individuals trying to change the world. He just kind of nodded at me and said, last day school mummy, and then he got on the bus. That was the last time I ever saw him alive. Mass shootings are one of the most horrific aspects of life in America that just don't seem to

go away. Together with the rest of the country, I watched with horror as news from Buffalo unfolded. A disturbed, racist, and anti-Semitic 18-year-old burst into Topps Market, armed to the teeth, and proceeded to shoot and kill 10 people from the Black community. We're all processing this terrible event, and I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that this is a problem that we've been dealing with for far too long. So today on our show, I want to re-air an interview that really stuck with me. And I have never heard a child sound like that. He was howling like an animal nicole hockley's six-year-old son dylan was murdered in the sandy hook school shooting in 2012 along with 19 other children and six members of the staff that horrific experience prompted her to co-found the sandy hook promise a non-profit

organization that strives to make the Sandy Hook shooting the last one. We envision a future where no child ever has to experience the devastation of a school shooting. Before we dive in to what is a very open and emotional conversation, I want to give a quick trigger warning. This episode contains a conversation about gun violence, the loss of a child, and suicide. If you or anyone else you know is dealing with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please, if you see something,

say something. We'll also link to some resources on our website and on the episode description. Nicole, welcome to All Inclusive. Thank you so much for having me, Jay. So, Nicole, I know this must be so difficult for you, and I can't even imagine what you went through, but can you tell us about the day of the shooting when you first heard what had happened? Sure, and thanks for asking. It was a Friday morning in December, and the morning was pretty uneventful and normal. I woke up my two boys. Dylan was six at the time and in first grade, and Jake was eight and in third grade at the time. And as usual, we walked up the driveway and waited for the bus to arrive. Dylan was autistic. And

at the top of the driveway, we would always play with the neighbor's kids. He didn't know how to play necessarily. But he they used to play tag and he would always like shout about who's the tagger, who's the tagger. And there was a weird moment before he got on the bus, which is stuck in my mind. There's a lot of things obviously that stick in my mind from that day. But we had a little routine because like a lot of little boys, Dylan had a love dislike relationship with school. And we used to count down the days. And so as we would walk up the driveway, like Monday was five days school, two days, no school. Tuesday was four days school, two days, no school. And this helped him understand days of the week and heading

toward the weekend. So Friday would normally be one day school, two days, no school. And as he was preparing to get on the bus, he looked at me and he said, last day school, two days, no school. And as he was preparing to get on the bus, he looked at me and he said, last day school, mommy. And I said, that's right, D, one day school, two days, no school. And he just kind of nodded at me and said, last day school, mommy. And then he got on the bus. That was the last time I ever saw him alive. alive. I was at an exercise class when a call came through from a friend letting me know that there was a shooting at the school where we both had our children. I collapsed to the floor in my class and one of my other friends collected me and took me in her car to drive to Sandy Hook,

which is only a few miles away from where I was. And as you got closer, there were just cars and police cars and sirens and the streets were jammed. So I got out of the car and started running to where the school was. There were just so many people there. This is a school with several hundred children, and it was complete chaos. And there's a fire station at the front driveway to the school, and they were sending everyone there. And the rooms were crowded with children all sitting down in floors everywhere, you know, the back offices of a fire station. And parents were just pressed right up against each other, trying to wiggle their way through to find their kids. kids. And I remember seeing a few of my friends looking for their children. One of my friends said, I saw Jake, my eldest, he's in another room. And I said, that's good. Have you seen Dylan? No.

And another woman who I recognized from the town said, what class is he in? And I said, he's in Ms. Soto's class. And she said, I heard she got shot. And that was the first time that I'd really heard that this was a potential. And I got angry and I yelled at her. And I said, don't you dare say that if you don't know it's true. And I just kept pressing my way through. And I found a lot of other first graders all sitting with their legs crossed quietly. And I'm just searching all the faces, looking for Dee. And then a policeman, I think, stood on a chair between an archway

and said, you know, we need to get the kids all to the front so we can start allowing parents to take kids home, make some space. At this time, I found Jake, and he just threw his arms around me, which was amazing because I knew he was safe. And he said, I found Jake, and he just threw his arms around me, which was amazing, because I knew he was safe. And he said, where's Dylan? And I said, I don't know, but I'm going to find him. And then they made all the parents stop, and it became silent. And they asked all the kids and the teachers to get the kids up to the front where the bays of the fire trucks were so that they could line up by class. And as all the kids up to the front where the bays of the fire trucks were so that they

could line up by class. And as all the kids were walking by, holding hands, some were crying. You know, you just keep looking at every face, looking for your child. And he wasn't there. And I went out front once all the kids were there and found an adult holding Ms. Soto's sign, and there were only a few kids there. I saw Dylan's reading partner, and she just had this blank look on her face. And I went up to the adult and I said, where's the rest of the class? And he said, I don't

know anything. I've just been asked to stand here with this sign. And parents started collecting their kids and leaving. And my friend said, do you want me to take Jake home and I said yes please I said I'm sure Dylan's fine I'm sure he's hiding somewhere or you know and I know mrs. Murphy his special education assistant wherever he is she is too she would not leave him at all they were very strongly bonded and eventually it was only some families milling around, and they asked us to all go in the back room, and even then my mind could not comprehend in the slightest that there was potentially any harm done to my child, and I started to just shut down,

and no one knew what was going on. And I started to just shut down. And no one knew what was going on. We had to fill in a form that said the name of who we were waiting for and what class they were in. Some people were crying. Some people couldn't stop talking. They were on their phones. I did not want to go on my phone.

I just reached out to my husband. And I said, you need to get here because I'm all alone and I don't know what's going on. And then they let us know that a lot of people had been killed. Again, no more details. And then our governor at the time, Governor Malloy, came in with what I now know were senators, but I didn't recognize him at the time. And I didn't even know who our governor was. I'd only been living in Newtown for 11 months, having recently relocated from England where I'd been living for 18 years. And our governor started talking and realized that everyone in the room

had not been told anything. governor started talking and realized that everyone in the room had not been told anything. And he was the one who took it on himself to be brave enough to say, if we were still waiting in that room, then the person we were waiting for was not coming back. Yelling, crying, screaming, just complete pain. And I just shut down because that's what I do and shortly after that my husband arrived we were assigned a police officer to take us home ironically my street in the house was also shut off because the killer lived across the street from me, which we didn't even know at that point. I didn't know why our street was closed off. And we went directly to where Jake was with our neighbors from a few doors down.

with our neighbors from a few doors down and I was not able to talk at this point and so my husband had to tell Jake that Dylan had been killed and I have never heard a child sound like that he was howling like an animal and uh and we just went upstairs to a bedroom and pretty much stayed there the entire weekend It's such a, you know, I can't even imagine, and my heart goes out to you and your family, and I can still hear, you know, all the years after how, you know, devastated this was for you. I mean, I remember clearly Sandy Hook from a national perspective. It made news all over the world. And, you know, there was an outrage at the number of children, especially that were killed in this mass shooting. How did the community come together after this?

At the start, the community came together very strongly and I didn't totally recognize all of that at first because I was just very much focused on my family but the outpouring of support from Newtown from around the world was amazing. And, you know, we had, there were vigils and President Obama came and spent time with each of us. And there were lots of immediate charities formed. People didn't know where to send things. There was a warehouse that was literally filled with gifts. I mean, everything from paintings of the 26th, of paintings of individual children, mountains of teddy bears, some really bizarre things as well, but it was a time of united grief.

And for some people, then they need to go back to their lives, and for others divisions start because I think after every tragedy I've seen since then, now that I'm so much more attuned to it, there's always a coming together and then people wanna do different things to try to prevent it and it creates issues and tensions. But for my community, some people had already come together. So I want to talk about Sandy Hook Promise and what the organization is focused on doing.

But before I get to that, something like this has ramifications that will go on for a lifetime for those that we're touching. And I know that there are people in the community who are affected who have since died by suicide. So something like this just has ramifications. ramifications. And unfortunately, as we're going to talk about a little bit later, these mass shootings are something that are quite a common occurrence in the United States. But tell us a little bit about Sandy Hook Promise and what the organization does. Well, we are focused very much outside of Newtown. There is a lot of ongoing trauma and grief and issues as a result of what happened at Sandy Hook School that will affect this entire generation. And I continue to keep an eye out for warning signs in my own son, who's now 16 and still remembers that day and what he heard and saw. steam and still remembers that day and what he heard and saw. But for Sandy Hook Promise, you know, our mission is to ensure that this tragedy doesn't continue to happen in future. We envision a future where no child ever has to experience the devastation of a school shooting.

shooting. And we do that by teaching people how to recognize the signs. In all of the research, you know, when determining the strategy, it became very clear that to create behavioral change, there's a lot of levers that you can pull. Education and programs, grassroots voice, legal action, policy action, political action. And the gun violence prevention movement had only ever focused really on policy. And then soon after politics, but no one was really teaching how to prevent it. And while Sandy Hook Promise still very much legislates, sorry, advocates for legislation in the area of mental health awareness and funding and gun violence prevention and safe access, we are well aware that you can't legislate for behavior. You need to create a behavioral change first and then have legislation to enforce it or reinforce it.

So we're very much focused on from all the school shootings that have studied, from the meetings with the FBI, from meeting with mental health experts, social movement experts, academic experts, gun owners, non-gun owners. We decided we need to teach kids how to lead this change by teaching them how do you recognize signs of someone who's in crisis, whether that is from self-harm, harm towards others, or anywhere on that spectrum of violence from bullying to something that could eventually escalate into self-harm, eating disorders, dating violence, domestic abuse into homicide and suicide. How do you recognize those signs and then intervene to get that person help? You know, speaking to a trusted adult, using an anonymous reporting system, fostering inclusivity and connection so that something doesn't escalate.

And that's where our programs are. How do we teach kids to recognize these signs? Because there are always signs, you know, four out of five school shooters tell someone before they commit an act of violence, seven out of 10 people who died by suicide, exhibit signs and signals. So these are all opportunities for intervention. And that's what we're teaching. So, I mean, I find it to be extremely powerful, you know, to go from, and we'll talk a little bit about, you know, guns that, you know, guns are the problem. And, you know, we have to legislate to let's look at people who are in trouble that could become, you know, mass shooters.

I've never encountered that before, but I think that that's a very powerful way of looking at that. And in a way, you know, very spiritual to open yourself up and to say, listen, you know, I'm going to go to an area that's probably really uncomfortable for me and deal with, you know, people that, you know, could have been in the same place as the person that killed my son and work in that area. But let's draw back a little bit and talk about, you know, gun violence in America. Why do these shootings happen regularly in the United States? Not just, you know, someone taking their own life, but going and trying to kill as many people as they can. And it doesn't happen as much in other parts of the world. Yeah. And I've heard so many ideas and hypotheses as to why that is, you know, is it violent video

games? Is it a mental health issue? When you get right down to it, it's about access to weapons because violent video games are not just the sole, are not just in the United States. People that have issues with mental wellness or coping issues, that is not the sole purview of the United States as well. What is different is access to weaponry. And that comes down to our Second Amendment and the way it's been translated to mean that anyone can have any gun they want at any time. anyone can have any gun they want at any time. And it's become such a political discussion,

so partisan and so based in fear that it's really hard sometimes to break through, to have logical conversations. And it's not about taking something away. It's not about being pro gun or anti-gun. It's about protecting kids. And that's something we can all agree on. So if we start from that basis and figure things out. But the problem in America is, you know, there's, you know, 330 million people and more guns than that. Um, and the fear messaging that comes out from more of the pro-gun, uh, lobby is, you know, you need to be armed to the hilt in order to defend yourself. Um, whereas actually mass shootings are incredibly small in number. Suicides are what drive, um, gun violence deaths. Um, and

that is all about access and, uh, poor storage, you know, and lack of safety. So I just, I read an article that you authored with Laura Dern, the actress, which says in 2020, 23 million guns were sold, which was a huge jump from previous years. And that in this year alone, I mean, we're sort of, you know, not even halfway through the year, but there's been 47 mass shootings so far in the United States and over 200 children have died as a result. This is a national disgrace. And why, I mean, without getting too political, why our state and our federal government, why are they not able to do more to prevent this?

They are very able to do more to prevent this. The problem is politics. It's become a political issue rather than a public safety issue. If it was treated as public safety, I mean, with over 40,000 people dying by gun violence every year and there are solutions in place, it's a shame that we're not able to put those, put our politics aside and just think as people. There's a lot of work that we can do at a grassroots level as well. I don't think it's just the job of politicians. It's around how we look out for each other. It's around how we respect and include each other. It's also around being you know, being able to speak up, uh, where a bit of a, or in the past, we've been a bit of a bystander culture.

Um, you know, I will, I will video what's happening, but I won't intervene. I will, it's someone else's responsibility to do that rather than being upstanders and leaning in and saying, this person needs help and I'm going to do something about it. So there is a behavioral change that's needed for all of us in addition to then having our politicians be upstanders as well. Do you think that we've, as a society in America, become in some ways immune to these shootings happening and just say, okay, well, this is just part of life living in America? I mean, will they ever stop? Or do you think that we're just going to wake up every week or every other week and just hear about something like this happening? I absolutely believe it's going to stop.

And that's my life's mission. So I will always believe that I think there is an element of desensitization, but it's more coming from a sense of apathy, or a sense of it'll never happen to me. We find, unfortunately, that most people only become active in this issue once it has touched them. And with 40,000 people dying every year, mass shootings on the increase, there is soon going to be a point in time when it is hard to find someone who hasn't been touched by gun violence. And I think that will be a big turning point. But, you know, I'd rather us not have to wait until we get there and take action now instead. Right. I want to talk about the shooter, and I know this is sensitive, the killer Adam Lanza. What do we know about him and how he got to that point of doing something so terrible and outrageous?

Well, having met with, having certainly read the police report several times and having met with the behavioral analysis unit who did some profiling on him, I think the main thing is this was a troubled person who had a lot of issues, observable issues throughout his life, and they were not intervened on. His mother, you know, he was prescribed medicine. He didn't take the medicine. He was prescribed therapies. They were ended. His mother was an enabler, as far as my opinion is, in terms of allowing his behavior to go unchecked and unsupported with help that could have stopped him from escalating. We don't know the exact triggering moment, but some of these signs were evident even in his

elementary school years with drawings about killing, stories that he wrote, which a teacher did bring to light, but nothing happened about it. He was incredibly isolated. He isolated himself in his own house, put blankets up, duct taped up over all the windows, had very little interaction with his own mother. This was someone who had no connection, potentially had an untreated illness as well, and had other drivers that made him want to go for infamy and the easy kill of an elementary school. And he had completely unfettered access to weapons. There were lots of guns in the house. They were not kept in a locked safe.

Many were found in his own bedroom closet. I had a friend in high school who died by suicide by a gun, and the family had a lot of guns in the house. And I mean, I think I've seen your writings, you know, guns are extremely, extremely dangerous items, and they're all over the place. And, um, you know, the access to them that children may have is just a lethal combination. Um, but you, you talked about, um, what qualities he had or what was going through in his life. Are there commonalities between other mass shooters? Are they showing some of the same traits that we should be looking out for? Yeah, it is. It is around these signs. These are usually escalating acts of self-harm or violence that go unchecked and unintervened on, and it just continues to grow. So that's why I'm so focused on upstream violence prevention. How early in the cycle can we create interventions and stop the next

escalation from happening? Because it is a spectrum of violence. No one snaps and overnight becomes a mass shooter. There's no such thing of that. This is something that grows. And while one sign isn't necessarily enough, it's about the accumulation of signs and the increased amount of them over time that really are a signal that someone is in deep trouble of self-harm or violence to others and needs an intervention. And that's where the focus needs to be early intervention, early support, and obviously lack of access to means to carry out any act of self-harm or violence to others. So, Nicole, you mentioned one thing in a previous answer, and I just wanted to see what you meant by that. People who are looking

for infamy. What did you mean by that? He, according to the police reports, he had been studying previous mass shootings such as Columbine in depth and wanted to get a higher kill rate. He wanted to be remembered as having killed the most people? I think for most of us, it's a really difficult thing to wrap our heads around. I mean, I know it happens all the time. We can list many, many famous mass shootings where a lot of people have been killed, including children. It's just so difficult to wrap your head around the idea, not that, I mean, death by suicide happens. It's frequent. You know, we should work against it and raise stigma and educate people.

But the mass shooting aspect of it is really hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. But yet it seems to be a thing out there that other people are following previous cases. Very much so. That is a very obvious and more overt sign of someone who is potentially planning damage to other, this obsession with previous mass shootings, studying them, detailing, emulating them. That is not typical behavior for many people. That's a sign of someone who is having dark thoughts and needs help. And the idea of competing with mass shootings, and unfortunately, we've seen it again, there have been shootings since then that, you know, the person has talked about wanting to do a Sandy Hook, or, you know, get a higher kill ratio than Sandy Hook. I can't, I can't go there after the act is done. But if there's something

that can be done to prevent that person from fulfilling that, which is often also a cry for help. As in the case with the Sandy Hook shooter, this was suicide by mass shooting. There was no intention that our shooter had of coming out of that school alive. And that happens a lot in school shootings as well. And that happens a lot in school shootings as well. telltale signs that we need to see, like, oh, this is not right. This goes beyond something that someone needs to be counseled on, but it's a little bit more. This is about significant shifts. And it can be hard for a parent when your child's in front of you every day. And what's typical teenager? What's teenage drama and hormones, and what is something beyond that. So I

always tell parents, please trust your gut. If you think something's wrong, ask, get an intervention, get support, have good communication with your kids and be part of their lives. But signs to look for include, have they stopped being interested in things that always used to be a passion to them? Have they drawn away? Are they unable to manage their anger or cope with something that would seem to be a small problem and they're overacting to everything? Are they having significant changes of behavior, of dress, of giving away items, of studying mass shooters or studying firearms and how to acquire it? Are they bragging about violence? Are they performing acts of self-harm or harm towards animals? Sometimes these are things that also build up. Are they just incredibly different

from the child that you've known them to be? And if this is seen in your family and is seen in school as well, and especially because teachers spend a lot of time with our kids. So we need to also trust what the teachers are seeing in the classroom and not deny. When the school comes to you and says, we're concerned about your child for these reasons, your heart wants to envelop your child and protect them, but you need to open up your heart to thinking the best way to protect them is to listen what their problems are and figure out ways to support them. Maybe, Nicole, we can talk a little bit about some of the educational programs that Sandy Hook Promise runs and, you know, you can talk

about them and the impact that they've had. We have two pillar programs. Start with Hello, which teaches kids how to recognize when someone's alone and reach out and include them, create connections. It's all about fostering connectivity and safer school climates. It's an SEL program that is used in thousands of schools across the country right now. In total, our programs are in about 15,000 schools in all 50 states. We've trained, I think, about 12 million people have participated in our programs as of this point. Our other pillar program is Say Something, where we specifically focus on teaching kids how do you recognize signs and signals in your friends particularly on social media where so much communication is done and how to then tell a trusted adult or use

a different system if your school has an anonymous reporting system or we then launched our own anonymous reporting system in 2018 so that you're not, we're not expecting kids to create the interventions. We're saying go to an adult, a trusted adult or an expert and let them say, this is what I'm seeing. This is what I'm nervous about. And this person needs your help. And then allow the adult or the expert to do the intervention. But those two programs in themselves have reduced bullying, they've reduced isolation in things like lunchrooms, they have gotten thousands of kids to mental health supports that are needed, they

have tangibly stopped a considerable sad number of suicide attempts. And they have stopped several dozen evidenced school shooting plans that we believe would have taken place had we not intervened. Can you talk a little bit about the program Students Against Violence Everywhere? And is there any connection between that and the survivors of the Parkland shooting in Florida? So Students Against Violence Everywhere, or SAVE, is our student youth empowerment. They're student clubs. So a lot of times where schools have our programs, we want to ensure that this becomes the fabric of the school it's not just a one and done training it's about how do you sustain it and it's about having young people get involved in

you know being agents for themselves as to the safety of their own school and community so we have about three and a half thousand student clubs now across the country. And we do summits and leadership things. We started this in 2017. So before Parkland. And there are SAVE clubs down in Broward District, which is one of the districts that we work with. Ironically, and sadly, we were just about to implement the programs in Broward District when Parkland happened, which I know my team took, we took every school shooting very personally and very hard. But the fact that we were about to train on that, and then this happened, you know, that hurt our team emotionally quite a lot. We have, you know, in terms of what came out of that with March for Our Lives,

We have, you know, in terms of what came out of that with March for Our Lives and Safe and Sound Schools, there's a lot of behind the scenes work. We all talk to each other, but we're focused on different ways to tackle this problem. Finally, I just wanted to ask you, in many things I've read, you refer to Dylan as my butterfly. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So Dylan was autistic, and he had limited verbal skills. I was very fortunate that he was good with touch and a huge cuddler. He used to hold on to me like a

koala bear half the time. And just a very happy boy. He also, like a lot of kids on the spectrum, had repetitive movements. He was a flapper. So whenever he got excited, he would jump up and down and flap his arms. We used to joke that he was just gonna, you know, take off and fly away one day. But I think he was four or five when I asked him, you know, why do you flap? And I really wasn't expecting him to answer because of his verbal skills, but he looked at me and he said, because I'm a beautiful butterfly.

And at his funeral, which was a week after the shooting, and my husband and I were, you know, addressing the people there, I started to talk about the butterfly effect and the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can create change on the other side of the world. And I that dylan and all those that we lost that day were butterflies and their their their energy was going to create change um so dylan you know is our butterfly and he is um that force for change and now when i have the honor to go out to schools around the country, and this is

no word of a lie, when I'm addressing assemblies with several hundred kids, you know, I see all the shining faces and then I see those light bulbs go off over their heads as we're talking to them and they know that they can make a difference, and then all I see are butterflies because it's the kids that are going to make this change happen. All Inclusive is a production of the Ruderman Family Foundation. This show is produced by Yochai Metal, Jackie Schwartz, Matt Littman, and me, John Zulu. If you enjoyed this episode, please check out all of our previous conversations. Look up All Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. As always, if you

have an idea for a guest or just want to share your thoughts, I'd love to hear from you. You can tweet me at JRuderman or email us at allinclusive at rudermanfoundation.org. Lastly, if you enjoy our show, please help us spread the word. Tell a friend or family member or consider writing a review on your favorite podcasting app. That really goes a long way. I'm Jay Ruderman,

and I'll catch you the next time on All Inclusive. All right. Goodbye, but not goodbye.