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Lingering problemsAfter Moses Lake, violence leaves mark
For the longest time, Jennie Luiten didn't tell a soul she wanted to kill herself. Only when she was talking on the phone to a reporter, giving one more interview about her roller-coaster emotions, did she talk about suicide. Her father overheard, and she finally got help. For Jennie Luiten, this is the cost of having watched Barry Loukaitis kill three people and seriously wound another at Frontier Junior High School. The shootings took place Feb. 2, 1996; Luiten's first conversation about suicide came last summer, two years later. Now a senior at Moses Lake High School, she found help in her family and church youth group but not at school, she said. Moses Lake school officials say kids are resilient and life has gone on. That's the case for some. Niki Greenwalt, 17, who also witnessed the murders, said happily that she's back to normal. A few of the survivors said it wasn't that simple for them. Luiten, 18, moved the next year up to Moses Lake High School. She wonders why the high school teachers never asked how she was doing. "The first year after it happened," Luiten said, "it was really hard. We felt like nobody would talk to us about it." In December, Moses Lake High Principal Larry Smith told a reporter: "I'm not aware" if any of the survivors are still having troubles. Luiten isn't surprised. "That's because nobody bothers to find out," she said. "They wait for a problem to happen, then they pay attention." Counseling through Grant County Mental Health was available for the students through the spring of 1996. But Garrett Lybbert, 17, needed more help. He went to private counseling for 18 months. Greenwalt and Lybbert were a grade below Luiten, so they attended Frontier one more year after the shootings. Teachers were supportive, they said. "Frontier really came together that next year," Greenwalt said. The survivors miss one memorial that was created for Loukaitis' victims. On a wall of their math classroom, the students painted a rainbow in memory of Arnie Fritz, Manuel Velas and teacher Leona Caires. The rainbow was torn down during renovation of Frontier. "That made us really mad," Luiten said. Today, there is no memorial to the shooting victims of Moses Lake. "There should be, so people could look at it once in a while," Lybbert said, and remember "we need to keep an eye on things to make sure it doesn't happen again." Moses Lake school officials won't answer questions related to the shooting, citing pending civil lawsuits. A few of the young survivors worry their schools can't prevent violence. Bullying and harassment among students were checked sharply right after the tragedy, Lybbert said, but less attention is paid now. "I think it's gone back pretty close to the way it was before the shooting," he said. Luiten, Greenwalt and others said that several good programs have started or flourished in Moses Lake since the Loukaitis shooting. But Luiten has her doubts about them, too. Loukaitis wouldn't have turned to any of those programs, she said. "He didn't like people," she said. "People who are having problems don't like people." |
