A young man who survived a Southland mass shooting as a child, weighs in on the Florida high school massacre.
Joshua Stepakoff was 6 years old in 1999, when Buford Furrow Jr. walked into the North Valley Jewish Community Center with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun and fired 70 shots, wounding five people, including Joshua, two other young children, a 16-year-old camp counselor and an office worker. Furrow then left the center and went on to shoot and kill postal worker Joseph Ileto. Joshua, now 21, says the increase in school shootings may be due to all the attention the killers receive.
“What we’re seeing is an uptick in school shootings and that could be due to a multitude of different reasons, but it could also just be an attempt to get publicity like all these shooters are getting after every mass shooting.”
He goes on to say that the feelings of that day never go away and he’ll continue to live with it for the rest of his life.
Stepakkoff was a guest on McIntyre in the Morning.
Sharon Reardon, KABC News.
