A reporter covering the deadly school shooting on Monday at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee told viewers that she had witnessed a mass shooting at her high school in Alabama in 2012.
Joylyn Bukovac was covering the aftermath of the shooting for NBC affiliate WSMV when she revealed her own experience with gun violence.
"A lot of parents are running up to me saying that they're nervous for the future for their kids. And to be honest, I'm right there with them because I've seen exactly what gun violence can do firsthand," she said. "I was in the hallway when the gunman at my school shooting open fired, shooting and killing one of my peers. And just the shock that moves through your body — I can't even describe it. You just go into true fight or flight."
Bukovac added that she hid "under the risers of my choir class" while her concerned family members, unable to contact her because her phone had been turned off, learned of the shooting from news reports.
"So when I arrived on scene … I knew exactly what people were going through because my family was on the other end of it, trying to get in contact with me whenever I was hiding," she said.
Bukovac said that the "hardest thing" about being in a school shooting is "not knowing what's going to happen."
"If you do have a student that was nearby or saw what unfolded, please be gentle with them," she urged. "Go ahead and open up a line of communication and offer to talk about it, but if they're not wanting to, that's understandable."
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Another woman, Ashbey Beasley, interrupted a team of Fox News reporters covering the shooting on Monday to call for gun control legislation.
"Aren't you guys tired of covering this?" Beasley asked, adding that she and her son had survived the July Fourth parade mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.
"How is this still happening?" she asked. "How are our children still dying and why are we failing them? Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens — it has overtaken cars! Assault weapons are contributing to the border crisis — we are arming cartels with our guns and our loose gun laws! And these mass shootings will continue to happen until our lawmakers step up and pass gun safety legislation!"
"Only in America can somebody survive a mass shooting and then go on vacation … and find themselves involved near another mass shooting," she continued. "Only in America does this happen, where we keep seeing it again, and again, and again … This is an epidemic. Gun violence is an epidemic. And it needs to be resolved, it needs to be addressed."
The Washington Post reported that Beasley was meeting a friend whose son's life was claimed by the 2018 Waffle House shooting in Antioch, Tennessee when the shooting occurred.
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