There were a few reasons we made this trip, one was to celebrate my niece’s fourth birthday. My niece is a typical four year girl that loves stickers, Dora the Explorer, and the colors pink and purple. She also loves to read books about the human body, wants to be a doctor when she grows up, knows the names of all the animals at the zoo, and wants to serve sushi at her fourth birthday party.  The party was to be held the Sunday after we got there. The Princess jumping castle was ordered, the pink and purple cake and cup cakes were ready and most of the sushi ingredients were ready. We need to get a few last minute things before the party so we decided that we would go to the store and pick them up.

At first only my mom, brother and myself were going to the store, but when you have kids in the house and they find out you’re going to the store - most times they don’t care what kind of store you’re going to, all they know is that you’re going somewhere and they want to go somewhere too. First my youngest nephew decided that he wanted to go. My brother told him that he could go, but he had to change first. In the time that he changed everyone else decided that they wanted to go too, so instead of just the three of us we had our own little entourage going. The oldest kid is six years old and the youngest is two so they all still have to use booster seats or car seats, so every time we take all the kids we have to take two vehicles so we all fit. We have to strap everyone in and make sure that everyone is sitting in the correct chair for their height and age, strap, hook, buckle, and fasten everyone in. Once everyone is in and strapped to whatever they’re supposed to be strapped to, we have to find the perfect CD - my sister’s kids love The Beatles and old eighty’s music, while my brother’s kids love children’s songs and Jazz. I put in the Beatles - how can you go wrong with The Beatles?

My two year old nephew starts saying, “I don’t like that one. I hate it.” I look at him with my “by the time we leave here you will love The Beatles” look, but it doesn’t faze him, so I start to change the CD. As I’m changing the CD the radio comes on and if you’ve ever been to El Paso Texas you’ll know that a lot of their stations are in Spanish, so this Spanish song comes on and my nephew goes crazy dancing in his seat, “Yeah, that one.” He says, so we listen to TexMex music on the radio as we drive to the  Fort Bliss PX (Post Exchange) to pick up most of the last minute things we needed for the party.

My niece was the next one to say anything, “I want to eat tacos” Ok, so far so good - that’s not a bad request since they have a Taco Bell in the food court of the Fort Bliss Post Exchange and we can all eat there.

Everything was going smoothly and we were on our way to the base when my two year nephew decides he wants milk for his bottle. My brother pulls into a convenience store/gas station type of place and the plan is for me to get off, buy a small milk and we’ll be back on our way in two minutes or less. That’s how it should have worked, but in my life things seldom go the way they should. As soon as I got off the truck my little nephew decided that he wanted to get off too, so I figured that he could come with me since the milk was for him. I opened his door, unbuckled him from the car seat and then that’s when everyone decided they were thirsty and wanted to get off and buy a drink, so we had to unstrap, unhook, unbuckle, unfasten, and take everyone from the vehicles. We all went into the store holding hands and everyone started to pick out their drink. I had my two year old nephew who kept insisting  that he wanted a whole gallon of milk and not a small single serving size for his bottle. I swear I held him by the hand but that kid was like a little Houdini, he kept escaping and running back for the gallon of milk.

“I want this one” my nephew said as he pulled out the gallon of milk.

“You don’t need that one” I said trying to argue with a two year old. “We’re not going home yet. It will spoil before we get home.”

“I want this one”

I was about to give up and get the gallon of milk when my niece walked up to where we were, and grabbed a bottle of chocolate milk. “I want chocolate milk.” she said.

My nephew put the gallon of milk down on the floor and said, “I want this” as he grabbed a bottle of chocolate milk. I put the milk back then chased him to hold his hand and keep an eye on him. Everyone else couldn’t decide what they wanted to drink and would choose one thing, but then change their minds before we got to the register. Finally, what should have been a two minute trip at the most, turned into a trip that was a lot longer.

We sat the kids in their car seats/booster seats and strapped, hooked, buckled and fastened everyone in when my niece noticed that the seal on her chocolate milk was broken.

“Someone opened my chocolate milk.” I looked at it and sure enough someone had opened her chocolate milk. I told my mom that I was going into the store to exchange but I was going in by myself. I was not about to unstrap, unhook, unbuckle, and unfasten everyone for a single serving of chocolate milk. I ran in the store exchanged the chocolate milk and we were on our way.

Note: the next part of this post was put together based on what I heard or was told by witnesses and people around at the time.

We arrived at Fort Bliss - it was about 4:30 pm on Saturday April 4, 2009. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except that as we arrived at the Post Exchange we were directed away from the parking lot by the military police. People were in a panic as the ambulance arrived and more military police showed up blocking all entrance and exits. I’ve worked on a military base before and know that it’s standard procedure to block the entrance and exits when something happens such as an alarm at the register being set off, but something about this whole situation told me that it was worse than just an alarm being set up.

Talking to others there we would learn that a 19 year old service member who was stationed at Fort Bliss for training was shot and killed by her husband. According to a lady that was there she said that the man came in after his wife and was shooting randomly through the store until he corned his wife at the jewelry department and shot her in the head, killing her instantly. She said that another woman carrying a three month old baby was grazed by a bullet and went into shock almost dropping the baby. She said it was the scariest thing she had seen in her life because you could hear the shots and people were running, crying and screaming not really knowing which way to run because you didn’t know where the shots were coming from or if there were more than one shooters.

After killing his wife, the shooter turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.

As I watched the military police block off the entrances and exit’s the thought hit me - if we hadn’t stopped for the milk and taken so long there we could have all been at the Post Exchange at the time the shootings took place. I always believed that things happen for a reason, so I really do believe that us stopping for milk was the reason that kept all the kids from being in a situation where some crazy man is firing bullets all around them. I really hate to think what could have been.

Here’s a link from the Las Cruces Sun-News with a little more information and background on the solider that was killed so tragically that afternoon of April 4, 2009