NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Sarah Shoop Neumann couldn't feel her own body sitting in a church pew.
She was at Woodmont Baptist Church, which served as a meeting point for families. The gunman killed six people at The Covenant School in Green Hills, where police ultimately shot the assailant. Of those six victims, three of them were 9-year-old children. She stood before hundreds at the Tennessee capitol Monday asking for tighter gun laws in the state.
She doesn't want anyone else to ever feel like she did at the reunification center.
"We got word quick," she said. "I got there as fast as I could. I won't be able to describe sitting in that church. All we knew seven people were dead from the news. I texted friends, teachers. We got confirmation our son's teachers were OK. My dad drove an hour to get the kids. But not before the first mom heard her kid was gone — those screams, sorrowing wails. I worked in pediatric oncology for 13 years. I held kids in my arms dying many times. Nothing compares to the scream of that mom."
Neumann said the last three weeks have been deeply painful. That's why she was standing there begging lawmakers to do something.
The topic of gun legislation has become a powerful tool in the Tennessee General Assembly. Gov. Bill Lee proposed a red flag law last week in a press conference alone. No members in the supermajority of the Republican party have surged forward to take the lead on legislation nor stood with him in the press conference.
"Third graders saw the dead bodies of their friends, not just coffins," she said. "They saw where those bodies laid and where it happened. The trauma won't leave us or our children."
She said fielding questions from her 5-year-old has been daunting as she tried to find a way to tell him what happened and being honest.
"The most painful question I have had from my 5-year-old ask: Mommy, how did they know to do the practice?" she said. "He said: So mommy, the shooter is dead, so more came come?"
She said yes. Another shooter could come.
