Photo by Alexis Boucher

I woke up this morning and was greeted by the news of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado that claimed 12 lives and injured over 50 others. A terrible tragedy brought on people who were just trying to enjoy the new Batman film. As more information came through, everything hit insanely close to home.

Jessica Ghawi was an aspiring journalist. She blogged about hockey under the name Jessica Redfield and was poised to take on an internship with the Denver Post. She was an intern for the You Can Play Project. She was active on Twitter, corresponding with other hockey writers around the country even as she was headed into the showing last night. Her last blog entry was about narrowly missing a shooting at a mall in Toronto a month ago.

Jessica Ghawi is gone and the hockey community is torn up about it.

I didn’t know Jessica personally, but I feel like I did. Her aspirations seem to parallel those of many of the Aerys NHL girls.  Maybe that’s why I can’t get this shooting out of my mind. It could have been any of us and in a way it was all of us.

It’s impossible to articulate exactly how deeply sad we are tonight, so I’ll end it with this. Rest in peace, Jessica.  We’ll go on to cheer for our teams another day, but now we’re cheering for one more of us.

Jessica’s interview with Chris Summers of the Phoenix Coyotes.