A mother who lost her son in a 2018 mass shooting told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Monday’s shooting in Nashville took her back to that moment as her other son was in lockdown at a nearby high school.
Shaundelle Brooks lost her son, Akilah DaSilva, during a mass shooting at a Nashville-area Waffle House in 2018. Her other son, Aldane Brooks, was placed on lockdown at a nearby high school on Monday when the shooting occurred at Covenant School.
“We didn’t know if we were safe,” Aldane Brooks told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “We didn’t know if someone was coming to kill us or not.”
“My heart dropped,” Shaundelle Brooks said. “Here we are again, another mass shooting,”
Brooks added that she wanted to race to her son’s school the moment she heard news of a shooting, but he told her to wait as they had no information as to what was going on.
“We’re not safe anywhere,” Brooks said, “We’re not safe in schools, we’re not safe when we go out to eat, we’re not safe in church, we’re not safe at the Waffle House.”
Brooks said she thinks about mass shootings every time she drops her son off at school.
The mother and son addressed families of the victims of Monday’s shooting saying they “understand this feeling first hand.”
“The pain will forever be there, but you’re not alone,” Aldane Brooks said.