Colin Goddard Is A Coward

Josh Horwitz wants to paint James D'Cruz as a potential school shooter based on the quotes and pictures on his Facebook page.

Okay.

Then I say Colin Goddard is a coward based on his own testimony before the US House Judiciary Committee.

Says Goddard

What started off as a typical day in a small town school in southwest Virginia, soon further expanded our definition of the worst mass-shooting in US history. Midway through my 9:00am French class, we began to hear muffled banging noises coming from somewhere outside of our classroom.

As soon as our teacher went to investigate the sounds, she slammed the door shut and told us to get under our desks and for someone to call 911. I took out my phone and, as I later found out, placed the only call to the police by someone in the building. The next 10-minute period was the longest 10-minute period of my entire life. It felt like hours.

....I had nowhere to escape and no time to react or even think. As I turned my head back, I told the voice on the other end of the phone that he was here, but I still didn't totally understand what that meant. The only decision that I was left with was to act as if I was already dead.

[...]

The force of the first bullet caused me to throw the phone from my hand and it landed next to the head of a girl named Emily. She picked it up and remained on the call with the police the entire time. Emily was ultimately able to give the dispatcher his location and help the SWAT team to get to us.

[...]

Each time he came back into our room I was shot again. The second and third time in both my hips and the fourth time through my right shoulder.

During Cho's 10 minute rampage, well before police arrived, Goddard was able to make a 911 call then stayed in place. Cho came and went from the room three times. No one did a thing. Not even Goddard.

Goddard even played dead.

A day after the shooting, while Colin was still in the hospital, he spoke to Lisa Ling for an Oprah Show special report. "I tried to act dead like I wasn't even moving," he told Lisa.

Go back to his testimony. He also says it there:

The only decision that I was left with was to act as if I was already dead.

His mother, Ann Goddard, says he was

"absolutely scared to death....He kept his wits about him, but he was scared to death."

He kept his wits but did nothing.

When Cho entered the room, Goddard says:

I had nowhere to escape and no time to react or even think. As I turned my head back, I told the voice on the other end of the phone that he was here

No time to react or think but he was able to tell the voice on the other end of the phone that he was here?

The shooting took 10 minutes. Before police got to the scene.

10 minutes.

10 minutes.

And nothing done.

Count off 10 minutes. Use a stopwatch. Use a timer. Now sit there and do nothing until the stopwatch or timer finishes.

Cho had that much time to wreck havoc.

No, you say? Goddard's not a coward? Not a coward because of the deadly nature of his situation? Not a coward because to have done something would've put his life in ever more danger?

Bullshit.

Wanna talk about acting against a threat despite the danger, despite being scared? How about the passengers of Flight 93?

From a phone call between Tom Burnett and his wife Deena, aboard United Flight 93 on 9/11:

Tom: They're talking about crashing this plane into the ground. We have to do something. I'm putting a plan together.

Deena: Who's helping you?

Tom: Different people. Several people. There's a group of us.

Writes Jeffrey Snyder in his essay "A Nation of Cowards":

Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens.

Am I saying D'Cruz is a hero?

No.

But to demonize him, especially when he has a Halloween photograph of himself dressed up like a Prohibition-era gangster carrying a gun?

That's freakin' low.

Somebody is desperate for a scapegoat.

Okay. Fine.

Two can play that game.