“They’re demonizing trans people, and it’s very scary,” she said. Mends became more alarmed over a series of bills introduced during the current session of the state legislature that would extend that ban to include high school students and prohibit transgender people from amending their birth certificates and receiving transition-related care such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors. From her home in Elkridge, Maryland, the 46-year-old romance novelist had read about a law approved by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 that banned discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in public school classrooms for children between kindergarten and the third grade. Lucy Mends was very nervous about vacationing at Disney World in central Florida this spring. In towns like Allen, guns are handed down from generation to generation and are as much a part of an individual’s identity as any other cultural touchstone.ĭisney v DeSantis: what’s at stake for Florida as legal tug-of-war ramps up?Ī Walt Disney World photographer holds a Pride rainbow-colored Mickey Mouse cutout before the Festival of Fantasy parade at the theme park in Orlando, Florida, last year. Today, it’s home to nearly 107,000 people, part of a huge economic boom in the region. What’s Allen like? Thirty years ago, Allen had fewer than 22,000 residents. “So I felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side and she had no face.” “The first girl I walked up to was crouched down covering her head in the bushes,” he told CBS. In a separate interview with CBS, Spainhouer recounted the horrors he saw first-hand. He arrived before emergency responders and performed CPR on some of those who had been felled by bullets. Spainhouer described rushing to the shopping center after his son called him saying he had heard gunfire. “And I’m saying that as someone who loves guns.” “We need some action in our legislatures at the federal and state level for better gun control,” he said in an interview with MSNBC a day after the mass killing outside Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesĪs an ex-police and US army officer, Steven Spainhouer is comfortable around firearms and goes so far as to describe himself as a “gun lover”.īut Spainhouer is now passionately arguing in favor of meaningful gun control after witnessing a rifle-wielding man murder several people before being shot to death by police outside a suburban Dallas shopping mall on Saturday. Robert Jackson comforts his mother Cheryl Jackson as they visit a memorial near the scene of a mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets mall. ‘Gun-loving’ ex-US army officer calls for gun control after witnessing Texas mall shooting Who were the other victims? Here’s what we know so far. A police officer who had gone to the mall on an unrelated call fatally shot the attacker, and a law enforcement official later told the Associated Press that Garcia had expressed an interest in white supremacist beliefs before carrying out the mass murder. What have investigators found out since the attack? Investigators determined 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia shot eight people to death and wounded seven others outside the mall in Allen. They were remembered as “the kindest, most thoughtful students with smiles that could light up any room”, school principal, Krista Wilson, said in a letter to parents. Those killed include an engineer from India, a security guard, a Korean American family and two young children.Ĭox elementary school students Daniela and Sofia Mendoza, grades four and two, were among those killed on Saturday at Allen Premium Outlets, according to officials in the Wylie independent school district. Brian Harvey, the Allen police chief, declined to answer questions on Sunday evening, saying of the investigation, “we actually don’t have a lot”.Īuthorities have yet to provide details about the exact series of events and publicly release the identities of the victims, but families, friends and organizations have released some information.
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