Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion After the Texas mall massacre, I witnessed a different sort of death

Columnist|
May 8, 2023 at 5:50 p.m. EDT
Mourners place flowers on a makeshift memorial in Allen, Tex., on May 7. (Jeffrey McWhorter for The Washington Post)
5 min

ALLEN, Tex. — On Sunday, I sat in my car, trying to remember how to navigate the scene of a massacre.

I had some practice: The last time I was on-site in the aftermath of a mass killing was in northeastern Nigeria eight years ago, reporting on a village that had been hit by a suicide bomber from the terrorist group Boko Haram.