A Malvern family was in Highland Park, Illinois, this weekend and witnessed the horror of the July 4th parade. “One person, with this one single rifle, can cause so much damage, so quickly,” Ashlee Jaffe said. “It’s incomprehensible.”
When the staccato crack of an AR-15-style rifle rang out over the July 4th parade in suburban Illinois, the little boy thought someone was popping balloons.
“I heard my son screaming ‘Mommy, Mommy,’” she recalled Thursday from her home in Malvern. “It was all quieter than you would imagine." The family’s trip to suburban Chicago for the holiday was Ashlee’s first time home in years, she said. The Highland Park parade seemed like a good way to pass time before their 3 p.m. flight back to Philly on Monday, Ashlee said the city, about 30 miles north of Chicago, is your “typical, idyllic American suburb with a small downtown.”
‘First it was mostly kids and pets, a bunch of kids and schools. There were motorcycles, wagons, strollers. and lots of dogs I spent the first half hour, waving at people,” she said. “Then it was what you’d expect. Flags and police and ambulances and firetrucks and firefighters waving from the windows. I remember seeing the high school marching band and convertibles with veterans sitting in them. The mayor of the town was there.
After the shooting, Ashlee initially sought help at NorthShore Highland Park Hospital. She was born there. It’s where her mother, Cindy, passed away in 2012. But she soon realized the small hospital was overwhelmed with victims. She tried to help people in the waiting room instead before leaving for another hospital.The murders, she said, left her with immediate observations about mass shootings.
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