CBS News
Standing on the threshold of grief, documenting the bedrooms of kids killed in school shootings
I never wanted to be this kind of reporter, knocking on the door of someone who lost a child in a school shooting. And yet there I stood, knocking, nonetheless.
I found myself here, standing on the threshold of grief across the country, after years of pent-up frustration. By 2018, America’s school shooting epidemic had taken a toll on me. There were so many that the news coverage felt like a treadmill. It seemed to me the country had grown numb and lost its empathy for the victims and the families. I wanted to do something.
For help, I reached out to Lou Bopp, one of the best still photographers in the country. But he said he had never faced a challenge quite like this: “to take a portrait of a person who’s not there.”
On March 27, 2023, Chad and Jada Scruggs lost their daughter, Hallie, in the Covenant School shooting in Nashville. She was 9 years old, the youngest of four, and their only daughter.
Looking back at photos of Hallie, Chad recalled how she loved sports and had “more stitches than any of her brothers.”
“It was just a lot of fun having a daughter,” Jada said.
“We had a chance to have her for 9 and a half years, and that was far better than not having her at all,” Chad said.
But their goodbye isn’t quite complete. They’re still living with her bedroom.
Over the past six years, eight families from five school shootings invited us into these sacred spaces, allowing Americans to see what it’s like to live with an empty child’s bedroom.
We traveled to Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, including 9-year-old Jackie Cazares.
Jackie’s parents Javier and Gloria say people are always telling them that they can’t imagine what they’re going through. But they say we need to imagine, and that’s why they invited us in.
“It just makes everything more real for the public, for the world,” Gloria said. “Her room completely just speaks of who she was.”
In Jackie’s room, we saw the chocolate she saved for a day that never came, evidence of the dream vacation she never got to take, and the pajamas she never wore again.
It struck us how many of the rooms remained virtually untouched, years after the shooting.
Frank and Nancy Blackwell lost their 14-year-old son Dominic in the Saugus High School tragedy near Los Angeles. That was 2019, but inside his room, it felt like it was yesterday.
“We just decided to keep everything as it was from when he last went to school that day,” Frank said. “He didn’t prepare his room to be photographed. He didn’t put away his stuffed animals because he was worried about who might see it. He woke up, he got dressed, and he left to go to school. And he thought he was coming back. And we all expected him to come back.”
So many rooms wait for a child that will never return.
Charlotte Bacon was murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, six weeks after Halloween. Her room holds the last library book the 6-year-old checked out, now 12 years overdue.
Luke Hoyer, 15, was killed in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day in 2018. When we visited his home, his bed was just as he left it.
Alyssa Alhadeff, 14, was also killed in the Parkland shooting. The whirlwind that was her room had fallen still.
Carmen Schentrup was yet another Parkland victim. The watch she got for her 16th birthday still ticks, but the motivational sayings that filled her room resonate no more.
The decision to either keep a room as it was or pack it up and repurpose it tortures many parents.
Bryan and Cindy Muhlberger lost their 15-year-old daughter, Gracie, in the Saugus shooting. They told us they often talk about what to do with her room.
“Because when I do go in there, I feel her presence,” Cindy told us.
Bryan wondered, “And so when that time comes that the room is not there, does she go away?”
I didn’t realize what an albatross the rooms are for some families.
“I will just say I have a pretty confusing relationship with [Hallie’s] room now,” Chad said. It’s extremely painful, but there’s a lot of moments where you want to be sad — because the sadness is a part of connecting with her.”
Hallie’s room also brings them smiles, too, Chad and Jada told us as they showed us a kitty cat hoodie that Hallie wore all the time.
The rooms really are a rainbow of emotion, all at once tender as a lullaby and shocking as a crime scene. Clues gather dust, leading us past all the places these kids had been up until that very moment when everything stopped so suddenly that there wasn’t even time to close the lid on the toothpaste tube.
In the end, we took more than 10,000 photographs. These parents hope that at least one of these pictures will stick with you, that you will forever carry a piece of their pain and use that heartache to stem the tide of all these empty rooms.
Tropical Storm Sara made landfall in Belize on Sunday as forecasters expect heavy rain to cause life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides.
The storm made landfall near Dangriga, about 55 miles southeast of the capital Belmopan, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.
This comes after Sara drenched the northern coast of Honduras, where it stalled since Friday, swelling rivers and trapping people at home.
Moises Castillo / AP
One death was reported Saturday morning by Honduras Emergency Management, who also said that there have been at least 90 rescues and over 47,000 people affected by the storm.
The Hurricane Center’s tropical storm warning as of Sunday included Honduras’ Bay Islands as well as the country’s northern coast from Punta Castilla to its border with Guatemala; the Caribbean coast of Guatemala; Belize’s coast and northward into the coast of Mexico’s state of Quintana Roo, from Chetumal to Puerto Costa Maya.
The storm, which is moving at 6 mph, will continue to move inland over the Yucatan Peninsula and could drop up to 10 inches of rain across the area, with localized totals reaching 15 inches, through early next week. The conditions “will result in areas of flash flooding, perhaps significant, along with the potential of mudslides,” according to the Hurricane Center.
NOAA/National Hurricane Center
“A storm surge could raise water levels by as much as 1 to 3 feet above ground level near and to the north of where the center of Sara crosses the coast of Belize,” the center said Sunday. “Near the coast, the surge will be accompanied by large and destructive waves.”
Sara is the 18th named storm of the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season, which officially runs from June 1 until Nov. 30, with activity typically peaking between mid-August and mid-October. An average season brings 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which did predict the 2024 season would produce “above average” numbers.
A gold pocket watch given to the ship captain who rescued 700 survivors from the Titanic sold at auction for nearly $2 million, setting a record for memorabilia from the ship wreck.
The 18-carat Tiffany & Co. watch was given by three women survivors to Capt. Arthur Rostron for diverting his passenger ship, the RMS Carpathia, to save them and others after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the north Atlantic on its maiden voyage in 1912.
Andrew Aldridge/Henry Aldridge and Son via AP
Auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son, who sold the watch to a private collector in the United States on Saturday for 1.56 million British pounds, said it’s the most paid-for piece of Titanic memorabilia. The price includes taxes and fees paid by the buyer.
The watch was given to Rostron by the widow of John Jacob Astor, the richest man to die in the disaster and the widows of two other wealthy businessmen who went down with the ship.
Astor’s pocket watch, which was on his body when it was recovered seven days after the ship sank, had previously set the record for the highest price paid for a Titanic keepsake, fetching nearly $1.5 million (1.17 million pounds) from the same auction house in April.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said the fact that Titanic memorabilia has set two records this year demonstrates the enduring fascination with the story and the value of the dwindling supply and high demand for ship artifacts.
“Every man, woman and child had a story to tell, and those stories are told over a century later through the memorabilia,” he said.
Rostron was hailed a hero for his actions the night the Titanic sank and his crew was recognized for their bravery.
Andrew Aldridge/Henry Aldridge and Son via AP
The Carpathia was sailing from New York to the Mediterranean Sea when a radio operator heard a distress call from the Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912 and woke Rostron in his cabin. He turned his boat around and headed at full steam toward the doomed vessel, navigating through icebergs to get there.
By the time the Carpathia arrived, the Titanic had sunk and 1,500 people perished. But the crew located 20 lifeboats and rescued more than 700 passengers and took them back to New York.
Rostron was awarded the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal by President William Howard Taft and was later knighted by King George V.
Madeleine Astor, who had been helped into a lifeboat by her husband, presented the watch to Rostron at a luncheon at her mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York.
The inscription says it was given “with the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of three survivors.” It lists Mrs. John B. Thayer and Mrs. George D. Widener alongside Astor’s married name.
“It was presented principally in gratitude for Rostron’s bravery in saving those lives,” Aldridge said. “Without Mr. Rostron, those 700 people wouldn’t have made it.”
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
