Carly Novell is a 17-year-old senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and was one of the fortunate ones on Wednesday afternoon: She survived the Parkland, Florida, shooting that devastated her school and took the lives of 17 of her classmates and bystanders.
It was the 18th school shooting this year alone.
Novell shared a tweet on Thursday, that has since gone viral, about how she made it through the shooting by hiding in a closet with 18 of her classmates. That feat alone is remarkable, but Novell added that when her grandfather, Charles Cohen, was twelve years old, he also hid in a closet while his entire family was murdered during one of America’s first mass shootings.
This is my grandpa. When he was 12 years old, he hid in a closet while his family was murdered during the first mass shooting in America. Almost 70 years later, I also hid in a closet from a murderer. These events shouldn't be repetitive. Something has to change. #douglasstrong pic.twitter.com/nDctTNlUNs
— Carly (@car_nove) February 15, 2018
The shooting Carly Novell is referencing in her tweet was lone gunman Howard Unruh’s “Walk of Death.” On Tuesday, Sept. 6, 1949, Unruh murdered 13 people and wounded three others in a 20-minute shooting rampage.
Carly Novell told HuffPost that when Cohen was living with his grandmother, mother, and father in a Camden, New Jersey, neighborhood, Unruh started shooting people.
“His mom told him to hide in the closet while they stayed in the room,” she told HuffPost.
“My grandpa heard everything and after that he lived with his cousin until he went to military school I believe. He never really talked about what happened and I didn’t find out until after he died. But family was so incredibly important to him because of what happened,” she said. “He wasn’t as lucky as me.”
Carly Novell said she hid from the shooter in her Florida school “in a closet in our newspaper room.”
“I didn’t have to hear anything. But I still felt it all,” she said.
“We were all squished together in the closet and I was comforting my friends while they were having panic attacks. I didn’t know when I would get out, I just knew that I had to survive and I had to make sure everyone was ok. I’ve never felt more relief than when I did when the police came and got us.”
The teenager also told HuffPost that she “really just didn’t think it was real.”
“I just wanted to stay safe and keep everyone safe. When I got out, I was just hoping to see my mom and hug her because I couldn’t even imagine how scared she was,” she said.
Carly Novell said that she wishes her grandfather, who passed away in 2009, was here now because she feels like they “share something really important.”
Novell’s mother, Merri Novell, gave us permission to speak with her daughter and spoke about the residual impact the shooting had on her father.
“When I grew up, I witnessed my father’s pain. He tried to hide it with jokes but it was always forever present,” Merri told HuffPost via email.
“I would practice making myself really small to see if I could hide in the smallest of places. As I got older, I carried those fears with me but also carried my father’s pain too. I witnessed the anguish my father felt whenever another mass shooting occurred. He would call me with such deep sadness in his voice and share the news with me. It was so painful to witness.”
Merri said that her father was against guns, believing “that no one should own a gun except for law enforcement” ― a sentiment shared by both her and Carly. Merri described her daughter as something of an “activist” and “couldn’t get over the irony” of her daughter hiding in a closet from a shooter.
“I am glad [my father] wasn’t alive to have to feel the anguish and pain that we felt yesterday. It would have been too much for him to handle. I am proud of Carly for carrying on my father’s message and speaking out against gun violence. None of this is new…history keeps repeating itself. When is society going to wake up and realize that guns kill people. There is no use for guns in a civilized society. We need new laws to protect our loved ones from all of this senseless grief.”
Carly Novell is headed off to college next year to study journalism and hopes for change.
“This has been happening repeatedly, there are too many lives being lost because people don’t want to make a difference. It happened to my grandpa and it happened to me. People value ‘the right to bear arms’ over people’s lives. I can’t even comprehend it.”
CHARLES “COHEN”????????????????????
it’s a jewish thang.
That feat alone is remarkable, but Novell added that when her grandfather, Charles Cohen, was twelve years old, he also hid in a closet while his entire family was murdered during one of America’s first mass shootings.
THIS IS ALL JEWISH BULLSHIT…..
yep
ya that shooting killed six million
I saw this and that was the FIRST thing I thought it was about.
“People value ‘the right to bear arms’ over people’s lives. I can’t even comprehend it.”
NO!!!!! WE care about ALL of the Bill of Rights and that’s what YOU want DESTROYED COMPLETELY, you f’g commie-joo scumsucking SOB’s!!!!
Well if you and your grandpa cared about defending yourselves, you wouldn’t have to hide in closets.
There clearly aren’t enough guns in this country, and she and her grandpa apparently come from a family that refuses to carry them.
that was then and this is now,,,,,jersey back then and now was against the law to own guns,,,A GOOD PERSON WITH A GUN WOULD HAVE STOPPED THE CARNAGE THEN AND NOW
Like most of south Florida, Parkland is at minimum 50% jewish. The next big group is latino and single digits of black and islanders. Down there, it’s ALWAYS about the 6 million, we the chosen people, etc. Oy…the suffering!
Notice the little hebe bitch wants to go to college and study “JOURNALISM”!!!! So she can continue the fake BS into the next generation, no doubt.