The Panera Bread Shooting - Three Years Later - Free

On a cold day in November, we met. She was wearing a red coat and clutching her Bible.

When our eyes met, she said my name, “Jenna?”

We hugged. Tightly. Neither of us wanting to be the first to let go. Tears flowed freely. Freedom was coming.

We ordered bagel sandwiches and found a table.

I wanted to hear every detail of her story.

Neither of us knew that she didn’t know why I wanted to meet her. It wasn’t until hours into our meeting that we realized what neither of us knew:

I’d been there. I’d heard the gunshot. I’d watched him fall. I’d run so hard and so fast my legs ached from the adrenaline.

She covered her face as her eyes filled with tears and she started to sob, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.”

I pulled her hands into mine. It wasn’t her fault and I wanted her to know it - to FEEL it. I didn’t hold anything against her - I never had. I’d prayed for her and for the opportunity to meet her one day.

I never knew how or if that meeting would happen. This was only a meeting Jesus could bring together.

She’d been married to the gunman. She and their children were victims of his abuse and of his torment. Their marriage had ended years prior in a divorce and for a time they’d lived in fear of him until he was declared deceased.

But he wasn’t. For months he’d been lurking, watching.

And that day in February, she saw him in Panera. Life hadn’t been good to him. He hadn’t been good to life. But she recognized his face. She called her son and he’d gone there, too. Even spoken his name.

A short time later, boom, fall, run. Lives changed forever by a single moment.

I shared with her my journey since that day. I’d experienced grief and sadness that is unimaginable. Life felt heavy, dark, dreary. I’d seen a doctor and he’d given me medicine and it helped. Tremendously.

I’d found joy where grief had once resided and hope where fear has crept. Jesus had used that day to bring me to a place with Him that I’d never experienced, despite spending my life in church.

The story had been redeemed.

She cried. She said, “okay. I hear that. I receive it. You just set me free.”

Freed people free people.

We met as timid strangers linked by an evil day. We left as friends brought together by Jesus.

Loved. Redeemed. Free.

——

I’ll always remember February 10 as the day two men laid down their life for mine. My son was just an infant that February and the outcome for our family’s future could have been drastically different.

But thanks to the incredible bravery of Pat Dailey and Mark Logston, countless lives were spared.

These men are my heroes and there isn’t a day I don’t think of them and thank Jesus for them.

Today, as I always do on this day, I left flowers at Panera and on the hillside and at the memorial erected in the Box Hill Corporate Center. I’ll take a few moments at each place to honor and remember and give thanks - to Pat, to Mark, to Jesus.

The only men who have ever stood in a place I could or should have stood in. Only one has healed me. Mind, body, and spirit.

Three years later, I’m no longer a patient who has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic-Stress. I’m off all medication, grief doesn’t creep, and fear doesn’t lurk around every corner.

I’m healed, I’m whole, and I’m free.