Colorado shooting: Sports blogger killed

  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78762.html#ixzz21EKkIQXo

A sports blogger and aspiring sportscaster — who survived a shooting at a Toronto shopping mall just last month — was among those killed in the mass murder early Friday at a “Dark Knight Rises” screening in Aurora, Colo., prompting grief and outrage from her colleagues and other members of the media.

Jessica Ghawi — who was in her early 20s, and also went by Jessica Redfield — had recently moved from San Antonio to Denver, according to KSAT, and was interning at 104.3 The Fan. She also blogged about the National Hockey League for Busted Coverage and on her own WordPress site, the last entry of which describes being in a shopping mall in downtown Toronto last month “just seconds before someone opened fire in the food court.”

“I can’t get this odd feeling out of my chest. This empty, almost sickening feeling won’t go away,” she wrote on June 5, three days after one man was killed and several others injured in a gang-related shooting at the Eaton Centre mall. “I noticed this feeling when I was in the Eaton Center in Toronto just seconds before someone opened fire in the food court. An odd feeling which led me to go outside and unknowingly out of harm‘s way. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around how a weird feeling saved me from being in the middle of a deadly shooting.”

Ghawi — whose Twitter bio reads, “You can find me in the TV studio, NHL arena/ locker room, on a plane, or writing. Southern. Sarcastic. Sass.Class.Crass. Grammar snob” — was tweeting just moments before her death. In her final tweet — to Jesse Spector, a hockey writer for Sporting News — she wrote, “MOVIE DOESN’T START FOR 20 MINUTES.”

Spector wrote in a post Friday morning that although he had met Ghawi only twice in person and exchanged a few emails, he considered her a friend, which reflects the “power of her personality.”

“Jessica Redfield was going to be a sportscaster, and she was going to be a good one,” he wrote on Sporting News’s website. “She was sharp, funny, enthusiastic and had the kind of passion for sports and journalism that makes people succeed.”

Ghawi’s brother, Jordan Ghawi, wrote Friday morning on his blog that he was en route to Colorado, and that early Friday morning he “received an hysterical, and almost unintelligible, phone call from my mother stating that my sister, Jessica Ghawi, had been shot while attending the midnight showing of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ in Denver, CO.”

He added that Brent Lowak, a mutual friend who was in the theater with her at the time, told him “that he took two rounds and that my sister took one round followed by an additional round which appeared to strike her in the head.”

Jordan Ghawi — whose Twitter bio reads “Student, Firefighter, Paramedic, Amateur Securities Trader, Adventurer, & Humanist with a penchant for knowledge” — updated his blog later Friday to say he had visited Lowak in the hospital and was told what happened.

 As shots rang out, Ghawi wrote, “Jessica advised multiple times for someone to call 911, which Brent immediately attempted to do. Brent then heard Jessica scream and noticed that she was struck by a round in the leg. Brent, began holding pressure on the wound and attempted to calm Jessica. It was at this time that Brent took a round to his lower extremities. While still administering first aid, Brent noticed that Jessica was no longer screaming. He advised that he looked over to Jessica and saw what appeared to be an entry wound to her head. He further stated that Jessica presented with agonal respirations.”

Denver radio sportscaster Peter Burns told CNN that Ghawi, who had interned for KVET 98.1 while living in San Antonio, moved to Denver about a year ago to pursue a career in sports journalism and “wanted to be involved in everything.”

“She was just such a vibrant young girl,” he said. “She just wanted a career in sports journalism. So she started saving up money and kind of begging her family, ‘Allow me to move to Denver and chase my dream.’”

Natalie Tejeda, a traffic reporter for KENS in San Antonio and a friend of Ghawi’s, told CNN she “had a wonderful smile and infectious laugh” and that she “loved hockey and had an aspiration to be a sportscaster.”

“I have no doubt that she was just going to be a phenomenal person, whether a sportscaster, a wife, a sister, you know, a daughter,” Tejeda said. “She did everything wonderfully, and this world is going to be a much sadder place without her.”

Jessica Ghawi’s death reverberated on Twitter on Friday.

“Devastated,” Burns tweeted. “Lost a very close friend in the shooting last night. @JessicaRedfield came to Denver to pursue sports career. I’m shaking.” His grief gave way to anger and confusion.