by Daveda Gruber:
Twelve people were murdered by a Virginia Beach man and one of the victims, Kate Nixon, had a premonition that something bad might happen.
The night before the horrific shooting on May 31, Nixon had spoken to her husband about bringing a gun to work for self-defense. Unfortunately, she could not act on her impulse because of the city’s ban on employees carrying firearms at work.
Nixon’s family is calling for an independent investigation into the events that led up to the shooting.
DeWayne Craddock, the shooter, was on Nixon’s radar before she was murdered along with eleven of her colleagues.
Kevin Martingayle, the Nixon family’s attorney, spoke on WHRV’s “HearSay with Cathy Lewis” radio show and said, “Kate expressed to her husband concerns about this individual in particular, as well as one other person. In fact, they had a discussion the night before about whether or not she should take a pistol and hide it in her handbag ˗ and decided not to, ultimately, because there’s a policy apparently against having any kind of weapons that are concealed in the building.”
The city policy states, “Employees who violate this policy will be subject to discipline, up to and including dismissal.”
Martingayle is focused on figuring how the shooting could have been prevented. He told the radio station, “We’ve heard a lot of information out there suggesting there were a lot of concerns about the shooter well before this happened. We need to know more about that. An outside investigation is the perfect vehicle to get to the truth. That’s it. This is a search for truth by a grieving family.”
Martingayle also said, “She was president of her civic league, she was involved with the swim team… she would have been celebrating her 20th Anniversary next month.”
Nixon left behind a husband and three young daughters.
I cannot speculate what the difference would have been if Nixon had been allowed to carry a weapon to defend herself when she felt that she could be in danger.
One person with a gun may not have stopped every death on that fatal day but if Nixon had been able to get to her gun, how many might have been saved from this horrendous slaughter of human lives?
