This is a story like one you've heard many times before.
It's a story about five gunshots. It's a story about a police shooting, a shooting of an unarmed man-the wrong man, a young man wearing the wrong clothes in the wrong place at the wrong time, a young man with dark skin and dark curly hair, a teenager on a short vacation with his dad, a teenager in an airport standing over a gun that was not his, a fifteen-year-old boy with autism concerned about the gun lying on the floor so he stood over it.
It's the story of a young man, big for his age, a gentle giant, staring down a policeman's handgun with a crowd forming around him looking for his dad confused, scared, overwhelmed. It's a story of a boy who didn't comply fast enough, who couldn't comply, who froze up, who withdrew. A boy overwhelmed, confused, and scared upon seeing his father suddenly reached. It's a story of how five gunshots that separated that boy from his father forever.
But this isn't that story.
This is a story like one you've never heard before. This is the story about a man-a father, the same father, still grieving eighteen months later; the father who stepped into a bookstore for the briefest of moment; the man, the father, who was trained to spot trouble, trained to solve problems; the father who could only watch but did not want to see.
This is the story of that man and a job across country, about an airport, the same airport, and the same man, the father, walking through that airport guilt-ridden, wrecked, alone, who still looks but does not want to see. This is a story about a man who sees something in that airport-someone, someone he knows, someone he was not supposed to see ever again.
This is that story.
