Oxford High School shooting survivor on living with trauma

Brut America

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.

Transcript

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.

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