She survived a school shooting by climbing out of a window.
Now, an activist for gun reform, Zoe Touray speaks to Brut about how to cope with trauma and how she's fighting to end gun violence.
Now, an activist for gun reform, Zoe Touray speaks to Brut about how to cope with trauma and how she's fighting to end gun violence.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00November 30th is a day that haunts me.
00:02Go.
00:05That day, a shooter entered Oxford High School and left four of my classmates dead.
00:09Over these past six months, I have barely slept one peaceful night.
00:12I wake up not knowing the year, and I don't want to look at my phone to check.
00:15So I was in the classroom that we like originally assumed that Ethan had come to the door to
00:30like jiggle the handle and like come in, but it ended up being a police officer.
00:33And so we were waiting throughout the whole experience.
00:35It's like a very scary like thing, obviously.
00:37And we eventually ended up, after realizing that we thought it was Ethan at the door,
00:42jumping, like opening a window and jumping out of the window.
00:50Spending so much time with like friends and like just doing goofy stuff that we used to do before
00:54to try to get back to some, what kind of normalcy.
00:56So just doing stuff like that, like going to the bowling alley.
00:59I remember we went to like the mall.
01:01We went to like goof around in Meyer parking lot.
01:03Like we did a lot of like really silly stuff to try to get our minds off of everything.
01:06I had to leave a few meetings because I had to leave crying because I had like flashbacks
01:11and things like that.
01:22At first it was very much a no for me.
01:23Like I was not headed out to any events.
01:25I wanted to sit and eat ice cream in my bed all day and like cry it out.
01:29And then I talked to my parents and my parents were very big like supporters.
01:33And they're like, you need, this is like something you need to do.
01:35Like I feel like it will help shape you in a way and it'll help get your mind off of everything.
01:40And so I listened to what my parents had to say.
01:54It's affecting young people.
01:55If you want to help your future because this is part of your future,
01:58then you should definitely join and help.
02:01I try to stay out of the news since what happened.
02:03So like, unless I see it on social media like Instagram or TikTok,
02:06I don't really hear about it unless my mom tells me about it.
02:09But we heard about Uvalde because it was like probably the biggest one very recently.
02:12I got a lot of text messages from friends and like even teachers reached out.
02:15And I look at my phone and like 35 missed calls.
02:18And I was like, okay, so everybody was like really worried about each other
02:20and nobody wanted to spend the night alone.
02:22I have a lot of friends.
02:23I have a lot of family.
02:24I have a lot of friends.
02:25I have a lot of friends.
02:26I have a lot of friends.
02:27I have a lot of friends.
02:29I hope that we can get like the laws that we want to get passed.
02:33I know that honestly it might not happen all at once, but like the safe storage laws.
02:38And then like there's one, I think extreme risk protection laws.
02:41And then there's also one about tighter background checks.
02:45So getting those like passed in some kind of way, even if it takes a minute,
02:48that's like my biggest hope right now.