Highland Park shooting: Texas family shares survival story

Valerie Dieterich grew up in Highland Park, Illinois. Her dad and mom nonetheless stay there. On this 4th of July, she was excited to convey her husband Tracy and their two daughters to benefit from the city’s celebrations.

“I am so excited for my youngsters to have this cute 4th of July and this parade, and go watch fireworks at night time,” Valerie recalled from her house in Houston. “And all of that was stolen from us. And other people’s lives had been stolen, and other people had been completely injured. They had been destroyed.”

In movies and images shared with ABC13, the couple, their youngsters, and the youngsters’s grandfather had been seated alongside the sidewalk, half a block from the place the alleged shooter, Robert Crimo III, opened fireplace from a rooftop.

“They had been loud, actually loud,” Tracy mentioned. “It gave the impression of a machine gun, however I feel even when I used to be inside a mall, you’ll assume, ‘Is that fireworks?’ So there was a disconnect of what I am listening to and what I am seeing.’”

Within the panic, the couple obtained separated. Tracy had grabbed their 2-year-old daughter, Reagan, whereas Valerie ducked right into a retailer with their 5-year-old, Madison.

“Everybody left their stuff there and we ran for our lives,” Tracy mentioned. “I referred to as Valerie, ‘The place are you?’ and he or she got here out of the shop.”

“We had been actually shook up. Sick to our stomachs,” Valerie mentioned.

The Dieterichs, their youngsters, and grandparents spent the 4th of July contained in the grandparents’ house in Highland Park, cautious that the shooter had not but been caught on the time.

Within the days that adopted, they grappled with what to inform their youngsters when the questions got here.

“Madison appears at me and says, ‘Mommy, why are we operating?’ and I say, ‘There is a dangerous man.’ And I mentioned, ‘That was a gun,” Valerie mentioned. “I assumed, ‘Ought to I not inform her?’ And I assumed, ‘No, that is the truth of the state of affairs. Be trustworthy and do not conceal it out of your youngsters.’”

Like so many People who face gun violence, they’re nonetheless battling learn how to transfer ahead.

“I get up interested by it. Go to mattress interested by it. We attempt to simply go house and lay low, and hug our youngsters tremendous tight,” Tracy mentioned. “These are small-town America. It is occurring in church buildings and colleges. If we’re not secure there, I do not know the place we’re.”

The Dieterichs say they may go to extra parades, and won’t stay in concern. As well as, they might like to be a part of the answer to ending mass shootings and gun violence. Although, proper now, they’re unsure what these steps could also be.