The Flight 93 Mass Shooting

Bend fought back

The Safeway store on the east side of Bend, Oregon following a double murder and suicide on Sunday, August 28. Photo courtesy Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin/AP

Last Sunday, that thing we all fear happening happened in my city, Bend, Oregon. A 20-year-old man - no, boy - started firing an “AR-15 style” rifle in the parking lot outside a Safeway store located about five miles from where I type. Apparently satisfied with the shooting he did outside, he walked inside to do more.

It is a particularly maddening feature of our time (among a not insignificant number of maddening features) that we, or at least I, think occasionally about random shootings in public places. Being in a large group of people carries a bit more risk than it used to. I don’t, and I suspect most of us don’t, let that fact deter me from doing stuff that involves us being in a large group of people, but it’s something one thinks about occasionally.

And sometimes you just think about what it would be like to be in one of those cities where things like this happen, the events of which are often known by the name of the city in which they occur: Columbine, Parkland, countless others and, now, Bend.

Predictably, it feels sad and scary. Less predictably, in this case, it creates civic pride and just a little hope.

The shooter entered the Safeway and shot and mortally wounded Glenn Burnett, 84, just inside the entrance. He then stalked through the store, spraying rounds down the aisles as he went. Molly Taroli, shopping with her husband, pulled her handgun out of her purse and moved to the back of the store, ready to confront the shooter there. Her husband ran out the front of store, that is, in the general direction of the gunman, to get his gun from his vehicle, apparently intending to come back into the store with it.

The tragedy of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas was magnified by reports that the police failed to take decisive action to stop the killing when it was still in progress. They didn’t enter the classroom until the shooter had, finally, killed himself. The shooter was free to kill and maim at his maniacal leisure while police massed outside, useless to the kids still cowering inside.

Bend Safeway employee, 66-year-old Army veteran Don Surrett, was determined to be of use. He was working in the produce section, located at the opposite end of the store from where the shooter entered. Hearing gunshots drawing nearer as the shooter made his way toward him, Surrett hid behind a cart, brandishing his produce knife. When the shooter drew near, Surrett jumped him from behind with the knife. The gunman fended him off and shot Surrett dead. But Surrett had distracted, disrupted and, possibly, injured the shooter. There would be no maniacal leisure for the Bend shooter.

On September 11, 2001, hijackers commandeered three jetliners and flew them, and their hundreds of passengers, into the twin towers and the Pentagon before the passengers, or most anyone else, really knew what was happening. By the time Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco was highjacked, though, passengers knew what to expect. They, famously, fought back, charging the cockpit and causing the plane to crash into a Pennsylvania field instead of into the U.S. Capitol Building, the hijackers’ likely target.

When Bend police arrived at the Safeway (two minutes after the first 911 call), they could hear shots coming from inside the store. Inside, the shooter, thanks to Surrett, now knew what he was up against. Bend was fighting back. He had to have heard the police sirens, and possibly even the sound of officers entering the store (unlike Uvalde, Bend police entered the killing zone immediately upon arriving). The gunman shot and killed himself.

There would be no standoff. There would be no negotiation. There would, thankfully, be no double-digit body count. Two victims is two too many, but it could have been far worse. Surrett, Taroli and the Bend police had learned the lesson of Uvalde and taken forceful and heroic action to prevent a tragedy from becoming even worse. Like the passengers of Flight 93, people at the Bend Safeway took matters into their own hands, fought like hell and saved untold lives.

Would-be mass shooters, who often, disgustingly, study in great detail previous shootings, now will know that there may be a Don Surrett standing, with whatever weapon is at hand, between them and their diabolical goal. And that’s where the hope, in the wake of this awful tragedy for my city, comes in. When private citizens are willing to fight, to stand in the gap, and when police act decisively and bravely, killers can be stopped. And maybe that will, someday, help stop people from becoming killers in the first place.