Toronto parents were shocked and dismayed to hear about a shooting at a Connecticut public school that claimed the lives of 27 people, including 20 small children.
As parents gathered by C.D. Farquharson Junior Public School on Friday to pick up their children, they told CTV Toronto they still can’t believe children were attacked.
The Agincourt school may be hundreds of kilometres away from the scene of the shooting, but for these parents the age of the slain children makes the story hit close to home.
“He’s like in kindergarten too, so it’s like… if that was your kid,” said one mother as she collected her son.
“It makes you think twice before you leave the house,” said parent Ryan McLaughlin, who has a 6-year-old son. “It’s one thing to shoot, period, but at a school and all those kids… that’s just… it’s unheard of.”
Some of the parents told CTV Toronto that Canada’s stricter gun laws gives them some sense of security.
“I think it’s a little safer here in Canada than in the United States,” said one father.
As one mother walked home with her children, she said she’d be thinking about the shooting in the coming days.
“It almost makes you want to keep them closer to you and make sure that in the day before they go to school you tell them you love them, because you never know,” she said.
With a report from CTV Toronto’s Natalie Johnson
