Downtown Fairfield. Image credit: Missvain
There are moments that make you realize that anything can happen to anyone anywhere. Even places that you have felt safe in. And all too often, these realizations come in the form of gun violence.
The Solano Town Center is a shopping mall and adjacent shopping center to the immediate northwest of Downtown Fairfield.
And if you have ever lived in Solano County, it’s a place you’ve been to multiple times. When I used to live in Vallejo, I’d go to the Trader Joe’s there roughly once a week. It’s in an average suburban area and nothing seems overtly dangerous about it.
It seems like a natural spot for kids to gather to get Halloween costumes and have fun. Halloween is when we dress up as serial killers, zombies, ghosts, and whatever other horrifying shit Hollywood has convinced us is entertaining. But on Friday night in Fairfield, California, the horror wasn't fictional, and the blood wasn't fake.
At approximately 8:30 p.m. on October 30, a gunman opened fire inside a Spirit Halloween store at the Solano Town Center, killing one woman and injuring six others. What should have been a relatively uneventful evening of last-minute costume shopping turned into a nightmare that no amount of Halloween decorations could have prepared anyone for.
The woman killed was 31-year-old Constance Hages, a San Francisco native and mother of four who, according to her family, was pregnant with her fifth child. She went into a store selling plastic skeletons and fake blood and never came home.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Four children lost their mother, an unborn child reportedly lost their life, and an entire family was destroyed because someone decided to bring a real gun into a place where people were shopping for fake ones.
Six other people were wounded, including a 16-year-old boy. As of Sunday evening, a 19-year-old man remained in critical condition, while three other victims, ages 16, 23, and 32, were hospitalized in stable condition. Two additional victims had been treated and released.
Witnesses described the kind of chaos Americans have become depressingly familiar with. People screaming, diving for cover, and desperately searching for exits. Some shoppers managed to escape by lifting a security barrier separating the Halloween store from the rest of the mall.
Imagine going shopping for a costume and having to figure out whether you're about to die.
It always feels more real when it happens in places you’re familiar with. These types of events contribute to a quiet sense of anxiety I assume all of us feel when going out anywhere in America.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a red state or a blue state, the city or the suburbs, there’s very little stopping someone from getting a gun and going on a killing spree. And it sucks that we all have to live with this in the back of our minds.
The abhorrent has become normalized.
My sincere condolences go out to Constance and her family, hopefully they can heal from this.
Rest In Peace.
