Shots Fired in Terminal 2: A Witness to the Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting Reflects on America's Mass Shooting Epidemic Paperback – August 7, 2018

Interesting 1st person account by a published author.

Chicago author William Hazelgrove has developed a significant following as the author of ten novels and four works of nonfiction - Ripples, Tobacco Sticks, Mica Highways, Rocket Man, The Pitcher, Real Santa, Jack Pine, Hemingway’s Attic, My Best Year, The Bad Author, Madam President, Forging a President, and now Shots Fired in Terminal 2. While his books have received starred reviews in Publisher Weekly and Booklist, Book of the Month Selections, ALA Editors Choice Awards Junior Library Guild Selections and optioned for the movie, his major appeal is in his humanitarian approach to stories. William stays close too the heart in each of his stories, making each tale he spins one with which everyone can relate on an immediate or a remembered level. In this particular book he is reporting an incident in which he was a direct observer – and that is as accurate reportage as possible!His latest novel SHOTS FIRED IN TERMINAL 2 he enters contemporary terrorism stories. His synopsis of the event/book outlines it very well: ‘On January 6, 2017, a lone gunman took five lives and wounded eight people at Fort Lauderdale Airport. This book is about the Lauderdale shooting told from the perspective of author William Hazelgrove, who just happened to be there with his wife and children. Though focused on one terrifying incident that the author witnessed, this story is also a prototype of American shootings showing the interplay of victims, police, media, the shooter, and what constitutes this peculiar American form of violence. The author documents the perverse chain of events that set the stage for this tragedy: the failure of police and the FBI to stop this troubled Iraq War veteran, who had earlier approached them and said point-blank that he was hearing voices telling him to kill others; the incredible fact that his weapon was taken and then given back to him, the very gun that would kill five people and shut down a major airport for forty-eight hours; and the circumstances of American society that allowed this gun to be checked through airport security as a legal firearm and then delivered to the killer, who casually strolled into a bathroom, loaded the pistol, and returned to the baggage claim area to start his murderous rampage. Interweaving his dramatic telling of his own experiences with a history of comparable shootings in America, the book presents both an anatomy of these horrifying events and the basis for understanding why they happen and what can be done to stop them.’Where William makes this book so intensely relevant is that though it is a microscopic description of yet another horrifying event, it is also a psychological reflection on mass killings that have become almost a daily occurrence in the past few years, as well as the less than ready are the forces to protect the citizenry and the misunderstood psyche of the perpetrators.Enough said. William Hazelgrove continues to grow as a writer of importance whose breadth of interest in topics for novels is truly astonishing. He is one of the big ones! Grady Harp, August 18I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book.

The most serious issue I have with this book is the fact there are so many errors littered throughout the accounts of historic mass shootings. These are really basic inaccuracies that could and should have been picked up on. An example is in the Columbine chapter, wherein the author says "13 students were killed", when in reality there were 12 students and one teacher shot and killed at Columbine on April 20th. Another example is in the chapter on Virginia Tech, wherein the author again gets wrong the number of people killed (describing 33 victim fatalities, when in reality there were 32 plus the perpetrator who died by suicide).Errors like this (other mistakes include using the wrong dates of shootings and the wrong ages of the perpetrators) might appear small on their own, but when they persistently crop up throughout the book, it calls into question the accuracy of the entire work.Another fault (as I see it) are the repeated non-committal references to there having been a possible second shooter involved the Fort Lauderdale attack. Although the author stops short of saying 'there definitely was a second shooter' outright, they heavily imply that four loud metallic bangs in terminal one shortly after the attack in terminal two were the work of a second shooter. The only evidence for this is anecdotal, and is to be considered especially unreliable considering no-one was shot in terminal one, no bullets were recovered there, and CCTV footage of the mass shooting is publicly available which shows Esteban Santiago carrying out the attack on his own. Even from the author's own telling, he speaks to another person who was in terminal one of FLL at the time who told him: "I didn't, I was just running because everyone said there was a shooter" when he asked her about the shots he heard. It is much more likely any noise in terminal one which resembled gunshots was caused by something completely different, which then incited a mass panic due to the tense situation.The best part about this book however is the novel perspective it provides to the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting. I have read several books authored by survivors of mass shootings, but this one easily provides the most immersive and emotive retelling of the hours and days in the aftermath of the carnage. This is where the book truly shines: from the author's desperate attempt to get his family as far away from FLL as possible, to his gut-wrenching encounter with a bereaved family member whose loved one was killed in the massacre.The fixation on the noises in terminal one are understandable considering how traumatic surviving an experience like this would be, and how common reports of multiple shooters are in the wake of almost all mass shootings, but there is little to no real evidence to suggest any kind of conspiracy existed that involved a second shooter placed in terminal one.I would recommend this book, but only the sections on the build-up to the terminal two shootings, the attack itself, and the personal aftermath of it. There are far more reliable and insightful sources for each of the historic mass shootings that are recounted in this book.What would have been great is if the personal history of Esteban Santiago had been related as the personal histories of the shooters in the historic chapters were; instead Santiago becomes a kind of blank slate in this book with little presence at all. This may have been a deliberate attempt to avoid giving him notoriety, but I personally would have liked to see more information about him and his life included.