Chiarra Lohr
I am an independent writer, local mom, and substitute teacher for Kennewick School District with an Emergency Substitute Certificate. When I learned about the shooting, like everyone else, I wondered, “How did this happen?!?” — especially with a child starting kindergarten next year and working in the public school system.
Since I cope with anxiety by learning everything I can, I reached out to the people I knew at Tumbleweird and pitched this project. I offered to go through all their research and documents and organize it into a timeline to help people learn about what happened and what we can do about it.
Right now, I am focused on the events around the murders of Amber Rodriquez and Angelica Santos. I am starting with a timeline of events, both recording what we do know and pointing out what questions still linger. My hope is that this project will help paint a clearer picture, identify the stress points in our systems, and bring our community together for effective change.
How the project is funded
Tumbleweird has generously sponsored this project so that I could both launch it quickly and can continue to update it. I want to not only add more information about what happened, but examine the systems that failed and how they failed (or, even scarier, the systems that operated exactly as they are supposed to and allowed this tragedy).
If you find value in this project, please consider subscribing to Tumbleweird. The lowest subscription is only $3/month and you will get all the awesome journalism they do for our community as well as updates on the Timeline project. Or give a one time payment to help with the launch of the Timeline.
About the Timeline
With presenting these events, I have tried to strike a balance, providing details without being gratuitous. I have included pictures and quotes from Amber and Angelica because I want to make sure we always humanize them, rather than washing away that humanity in sterile language. I want you to see how incredibly brave both of them were to stand up against someone so abusive—and someone who wieded immense power over them. If you knew them, I hope you feel I did them justice.