Student/blogger Charles Roop got a call from his friend and co-blogger recently and was told to stop by work. There had been a shooting at the convenience store. And then he learned the terrible news: his boss, Robert Smith, had been shot…and was dead.
Read his post in full here and you’ll be haunted by it and struck again by the suddenness with which death can strike at or touch us all. We’ll just give you a small taste of what he writes about this tragedy in Florida:
I got to the store to see the yellow crime scene tape around the entrances of the main parking lot, cars parked near the property as well as TV news trucks and one TV helicopter flying overhead. The first one I saw was Matt, a teen bagger. I called his name. A rush of fright and shock came to me as my arms and body felt real tingly. The last time I felt this was right after my car accident on March 21, 2002. I nearly fell on my knees. Matt held my arm up as he tried to get me up. I ran into some of the co-workers and lightly cried on their shoulders. For the first few minutes of being there, all I could ask was why. “Why? Why did this happen?” I calmed down after a while. …
Mr. Smith was one of the first people I met when I started to work at Kash N’ Karry five years ago. Not only he was the CSM, he was the hiring manager. He seemed like the manager you didn’t want to talk to or mess with at first. Later on, he seemed to be a nice guy with a good heart and desire….He had a good sense of humor, a good heart and has always shown “tough love.” He was a family man. He met his wife through working at Kash N’ Karry years ago. He got married around three years ago. Mr. Smith adopted one kid and was in the process of adopting another. He clearly showed his love for children.
Now, I can’t even imagine what his wife is going through. His children won’t even get to know the father that loved them very much. He also recently talked to me about retirement from the company once the 25th year of working for them hit the calendar.
Read it all yourself — and read his follow up here of how they’re coping with grief. A small excerpt:
When I woke up for school on Friday, I was kind of “zombified” and quiet…There were a couple of times during lecture where I almost started to cry. I started to feel better as the day wore on, mainly when I started to work in the science department, my second job which is at CFCC.
I felt a little better Saturday morning…until I walked in the doors at Kash N’ Karry for my 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. bagger shift. It seemed real eerie to me. It was my first time walking through those automatic sliding-glass doors since the incident happened last Thursday. One of the cashiers working that day was going in and out of crying, but got better before the end of her shift. Some of the cashiers, including Cassidy, came in for a visit to see how everyone was doing. I felt a little more lively before I left.
Our condolences go out to Robert Smith’s family and to Roop and his young co-workers who knew him. And we give special thanks to Roop for sharing his innermost thoughts so eloquently with all of us.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.