Note: I covered Northwell Health’s Gun Violence Prevention Forum in Manhattan on Dec. 12. Here’s my Herald Community Newspapers story:
By Scott Brinton
Six bullets pierced Jessica Ghawi’s body on July 20, 2012. The “kill shot,” said her mother, Sandy Phillips, cut a five-inch hole in the side of her face. The aspiring sports reporter was one of 12 killed in the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre. Seventy were injured.
On Dec. 12, Phillips and her husband, Lonnie, sat before 170 physicians, hospital administrators and researchers from across the country at Northwell Health’s Gun Violence Prevention Forum, recounting the awful moments of their daughter’s death.
Ghawi had survived a mass shooting in Toronto in June 2012, only to be killed seven weeks later, they said.
The couple were among 26 speakers at the intense morning-long seminar in Manhattan, convened to gather support for a nationwide coalition of health care providers that will work to reduce gun violence.
The Phillipses, who started the nonprofit foundation Survivors Empowered, held hands as they spoke plainly, deliberately. They were there, they said, to advocate for the survivors of mass shootings.
“We see their pain,” Sandy said. “We see their daily struggles.”
For more, click here.
