Crystal Lake couple whose son died in Colorado shooting understands Las Vegas families’ pain

CRYSTAL LAKE – When Kathleen Larimer woke up Monday morning amid news of the Las Vegas massacre, she said she felt shock and horror as she was reminded of the shooting that killed her son five years ago.

At least 59 people died and more than 520 were injured Sunday when a gunman fired into the crowd at the outdoor Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas.

The events dredged up old feelings for Crystal Lake resident Kathleen and her husband, Scott Larimer, who lost their son, John, in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting.

John was one of 12 people killed July 20, 2012, during the premiere of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises.” A 2003 Crystal Lake South graduate and Navy petty officer 3rd class, John died at age 27 while shielding his girlfriend, who was unharmed.

“I hope the families have a very strong connection,” Scott said. “We survived because we have a tight-knit family, and we leaned on each other. We still help each other get through, and I’m not sure these feelings will ever be gone, but we count on each other.”

Scott said the Las Vegas events reminded him of the frantic hours right after the Colorado shooting.

“We were thousands of miles away, just like many people for the Vegas shooting, so it’s not like you can rush to the scene and try to locate a loved one,” Scott said. “It makes it tougher to try and find out anything. We were frantically doing anything we could think of to find the status of John, and it took too many hours. That is pain, when you are trying to find a loved one.”

The couple warned families about how they were revictimized during charity hoaxes. Scott said that after the Colorado shooting, people used “the faces and names of our loved ones to generate millions with the idea that it was to go to the victims,” but then used it for other purposes, such as taking the money themselves or giving it to other nonprofits.

Within 12 hours of the Las Vegas attack, dozens of fundraisers for the victims appeared on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe.com. However, it is hard to know exactly where the money goes in these types of campaigns, Scott said.

The couple promotes donating to the National Compassion Fund, a group set up by victims and families from past mass killings.

“In any of these cases, people take a real financial impact,” Kathleen said. “At the Pulse nightclub shooting, many of them were young people who did not have life insurance, and families were struggling to pay for funerals. With John being active-duty Navy, we didn’t have those worries, but those injured even suffered high costs.”

The couple also are members of a “No Notoriety” campaign, which asks the media to show restraint in its coverage of the killers by limiting the use of the killers’ names and photos and refraining from publishing manifestos. The organization was founded by the parents of another Colorado shooting victim.

Kathleen said that the same science that follows suicide contagion exists with shootings. When there is a high-profile suicide, there tends to be an uptick in suicides afterward, she said.

With people turning to calls for gun violence prevention, Kathleen said now is not the time to loosen gun laws, as pending legislation suggests. She said there is no right answer, but something needs to change.

“What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? We are not doing anything to change anything, so why wouldn’t we expect this to continue to happen?” Kathleen said. “With this being billed as the biggest shooting ever, what’s to stop someone else from hearing all that and work to make his mass shooting even bigger?”

Kathleen said she feels sorry that Las Vegas families will not be able to have a trial against the shooter because it helped them answer questions they had and allowed them to find a small amount of peace in their situation.

“If we have a mission of life from now – I would like to be out of mission work if I could – but I can’t believe we haven’t seen the end of these shootings, but I hope the National Compassion Fund will step up, and we’ll support the families and tell them the experiences we had,” Scott said.

The couple thanked the Crystal Lake community for donations they received during their time of grief, including photos, flowers, car service and more. Scott said he hopes to be there for the Las Vegas families in return.

“A theater. A concert. Church. School. The fact is you can picture yourself or a loved one at a venue like this, and therefore, it becomes real personal, even if you don’t know anybody there,” Scott said. “I hope people don’t crawl into their basement. We still go to the movies, and my grandkids go to school now and need to be able to do that and feel that they are in a safe place.”