Throughout the trial Andy Goddard’s thoughts were
never far from his son. Sitting in the courtroom day in and day out, he
continually thought, “How lucky I am, I have my son.” Thoughts of his son’s
birth in Kenya and childhood in Bangladesh and Indonesia flooded back,
particularly the concern that relatives had for Colin and the whole family’s
safety. He remembered how family and relations worried and could not wait for
his family to return to the safety of the United States.
As Andy listened to the defense witnesses run from
the truth, he remembered April 16th vividly. He remembered wondering
how Colin’s younger sister, Emma, would handle the news her brother had been
shot and seriously wounded.
Emma is seven years younger than Colin and when
they adopted her in Indonesia, Colin took to his new sister immediately. He
helped feed and care for her from the time she was just a few days old. The
bond between the two was solid in the very best sense of a brother-sister
relationship. Emma idealized her older brother. Indeed, even after the shooting
she would consider no other school than Virginia Tech because her brother had
gone there.
Goddard also remembered sitting by his son’s
bedside watching Colin bleed profusely from his open wounds. The doctors had
not sewn his son’s wounds shut; they wanted him to bleed to help clear the
debris. Andy remembered watching the nurses take away the bloody sheets as
Colin bled; he remembered the tubes and the IVs giving his son life-saving
liquids to help replace the fluids he was losing. Unlike Larry Hincker, Andy
had no problem remembering every last detail. He remembered being told that his
son’s femur had been shattered and that he would have a titanium rod in his
leg. He remembered wondering if Colin would be able to walk without using a
cane, or whether he would be able to play sports.
Andy could not forget reporters trying to sneak
into the hospital to get photos of his son and other victims. He was especially
repulsed by a female reporter who tried to sneak a camera into the hospital by
saying she was carrying a pump to help breast feed her child. The bag she was
carrying contained a camera. Another reporter tried to sneak in dressed as an
emergency room nurse.
But even with all these details from that horrific
day in 2007, there were some things Andy had no way of knowing. He had
questions he could not answer. So he sat in the courtroom listening to
testimony from officials and taking notes to answer the biggest most pressing
question: Why? Why had officials failed to act to protect his son and the other
students? And why had they allowed errors in the follow-up investigation to
stand? (To be continued)
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