Alex Witt had a guest on her show who, sadly, was front and center to the Odessa mass shooting on Saturday. She describes, in incredibly powerful detail, how she had to maneuver around other cars to try to get out of the path of the shooter whom she was sure was targeting her at one point during his rampage.
Her name is Shauna Saxton and she is a survivor. She had her 2 year old grandson in car and when she starts talking about the other young toddler shot, she breaks down in tears. This is her community and they all share the trauma and pain of loss.
“I floored it hard," she said, recalling her encounter with the crazed man with an assault-style weapon. "I was — I was a danger to society at that moment, when I was driving fast. And we got to a stoplight and there was no way I was going to stop at that stoplight, so I turned immediately to the right and went in to a neighborhood."
“He looked crazy,” she recalled. “His mind — he looked crazed. Excited. Not excited in a happy or good way, just amped up, maybe is a better word, and he wasn’t right. He wasn’t right. His hair was all disheveled. He was looking at the gun and looking at me and then the gun came up.”
By the end of the interview, everyone was crying. After watching it, you will too. Saxton admits that she had trouble sleeping last night, because she couldn't stop thinking about the other victims. "I knew what was coming, and I couldn't warn them. I couldn't help them," Saxton cries before breaking down entirely.
The pain is tangible. Saxton was in a life-and-death situation and reacted correctly to save her own life.
Contrast that, then, to Republican politicians, who can only offer "thoughts and prayers" as 602 Americans have lost their lives and 2,356 have been injured in mass shootings in 2019 alone. They know that this will happen again, and it's not that they can't help, but they won't.
