Link To Dunblane Article

[TwoIfBySea]

For anyone who was interested from the other thread. This article brings tears to the eyes but proves how life does go on for the survivors of this atrocity.

\link{http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=314162006\Dunblane}

Now I know some people hate for these things to be posted but I felt the article worthwhile for everyone who remembers this. I will post all subsequent articles on this thread so anyone interested can follow how the family pulled themselves together afterward and the following years.

Thank you for posting.

I never knew the dteails to this until i read the two articles posted on here

I have cried both times, especially about the little boy trying to lie still. My dd is in Reception and it just makes my blood run cold.

That broke my heart too Angeliz, the poor little thing lying there, so very scared but trying his best to keep still.....its just unimaginable

How could anyone hate children so much

My heart just BREAKS for these people. I guess no one will ever know what was going on in that man's head. Not that it helps.

This is the \link{http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=335602006\next part} of Matthew's story.

You know, sometimes I wish Hamilton had survived, just so he could have gotten what was coming to him, and I don't mean a measly British "justice" jail sentence. This little boy was so brave, as were all the children who lived through it.

So sad what that poor boy went through. To realise, at age 5, that he had to pretend to be dead like his little friends were was the only way to survive. No 5 year old hould ever have to know that :(

Thank you for that link - I don't think people should ever forget what happened.

It hurts so much to read but I just had to.

Although I hope there will never be another tragedy like that again I felt these articles would be helpful for anyone dealing with a child going through a horrendous trauma. To show at least some hope at the end of it all.

I just don't understand how these people turn into monsters and can think of harming innocent children.

Did anyone ever find out why he did it?

Crazydazy I can't remember exactly but it was something to do with he wasn't given permission to hold his boys sports thing in the school? I could be completely wrong as he was as the teacher who survived said the devil in action but I am sure it was something like that. He felt slighted by the community...

He did some kind of evening boys gym class where he made them take off their t-shirts and wear very small shorts, I do remember that as some parents had complained at his treatment of some of the boys yet some parents had stuck up for him. I remember thinking about those parents that supported him, how they must feel after he did that.

The whole gun thing, he was allowed to keep what amounted to a small arsenal of weapons due to licensing and there was a chance his guns were going to be taken away too.

I am a little hazy on the whole thing because as far as I was concerned nothing mattered but the fact that man took those guns into that school. It was supposed to be the school assembly, he misjudged the time, and took it out on those tiny children.

I live close to Dunblane and at the time of the shootings worked for the local Council.
From the very earliest reports coming in, my then boss mentioned Thomas Hamilton - he said that it had to be him. This was before it was all confirmed.

I remember it as a very strange day and it seeming very unreal that such a thing could be happening on our doorstep. I was 26 at the time; had no children of my own then, Thank God but I remember seeing staff literally fleeing into the car park to drive home presumably because their children attended Dunblane Primary School.

I knew one family whose daughter was in Primary one and whose father had died of cancer only weeks before. I remember distinctly just thinking, "Please God, don't let it be X, her poor mother just couldn't be asked to bear any more". Thankfully for this family, the daughter was in the "other" primary one class.

Hamilton held a grudge against local schools and the local authority because he had been prevented from holding his "Boys Clubs" in Council run properties (including schools)because there had been a general unease about his practices. However none of the parents had lodged a formal complaint. Hamilton took the local authority to the Local Govt Ombudsman and won his case and so the Council was unable to stop him from using their premises.

I spent the day helping out at the Council's press office and fielding calls from some of the most insensitive and sensationalist newspaper reporters. I couldn't believe some of what we were being asked about. We had been given a very strictly to be adhered to press statement and were allowed to release one official school photograph but that was very much it but some people were really dredging for the most awful details.

It was a day that I still think about every now and again for no apparent reason. It still seems somehow surreal and as a parent now myself, I find it an obscenely horrible thing to try to imagine how it must have felt for the parents at the time and to this day. I know I'll weep buckets at the tv coverage but will feel compelled to watch it. I think the difficulty is that we try to make sense of these terrible events but often there is no sense to be had.

There is a programme at 8pm on Channel 5 tonight with some of the families talking for the first time about that day. I'm not sure that I will be able to watch it but thought I would mention it here.

Those articles are heart-breaking but, like Flip, I had to read them.

Ds1's birthday is March 13th - he was born exactly one year after that terrible day at Dunblane, and will be 9 on the 10th anniversary. I always think of those children and their teacher and their families on his birthday. I think Dunblane, like other tragic events, is something where you can always remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news - and I remember going to work and everyone seemed so sad and subdued everywhere.

I can still remember the day.

What I had forgotten was that it was P1s. Ds is now in P1 - I look at him and wonder how devastating it must have been for all those involved. As a mum now, it is even more horrifying.

Thanks for clarifying that spub, I had read about him but was too upset at the time to take much in. It must have been worse to be in the frontline, journalists can be callous in trying to get their angle on a story, forgetting the little lives involved.

I didn't know none of the parents had made official complaints about him, what would have happened if they had done? I just recall in the aftermath some saying they had complained but other parents stuck up for him.

Twoif,
If my memory serves then there were complaints but they were verbal, unsubstantiated ones that wouldn't hold water as a basis for police action, eg. I think that some parents may have had strong suspicions but nothing more "concrete" than those and nothing that would have held up in court. Hamilton was not an unintelligent man - evidenced from his taking the Council to the ombudsman and having the ombudsman find in his favour.