FLORIDA — Sarah Lesch found out about the shooting at Florida State University on Thursday through the university’s alert system on her phone.
“Immediately felt nauseous, just sick with worry,” the Tampa mom of three told us.
Two of her sons attend F-S-U. One is set to graduate this year.
Fears of a campus shooter have been a part of her and her boys’ lives for years.
“I think this is something as an American parent we’ve been dealing with for a long time. In high school, they have their drills,” she said.
On Thursday morning, years of school drills played out in real time.
“I didn't hear from one of them at first and the other one tells me he's going over to pick up his younger brother, and he's waiting in his car because he heard that this had happened. That made me even more nervous because now he’s going into a zone that’s unsafe.”
At the time, her younger son, a sophomore, was on lockdown in his classroom right across from the student union where the shootings reportedly occurred.
“He's really rattled. I mean, this happened right across from where he was taking a class, and he heard the gunshots, so he's pretty shaken up. His friends are safe, but there is somebody that was in one of their clubs that he said was shot in the shoulder,” Lesch explained.
As details have yet to emerge about what led up to the shooting, who was responsible and why, the Lesch’s are still processing it all.
“You're very aware of it. You just hope that your kids get out of, whether it's high school or college, unscathed,” she said.
Next year, her youngest heads to F-S-U too. It’s a college they’ve always felt was safe but on the weekend before Easter learned firsthand, it’s not immune.
“I feel like this could happen on any American campus,” she said. “We have a lot of friends that live overseas, and they get very concerned when they think about their kids coming to school in this country because it's a little bit different here,” she said.
“You know, I gave him probably the biggest hug I could ever recall giving him, and he held on tight"
A father and son from Parrish reunited after Thursday’s horrific mass shooting at Florida State University. Steve Malave drove hundreds of miles to be with his son Christopher in the aftermath.
