Recollections of the SMC Shooting: 5 Years Later
June 7, 2013 is a day remembered by many in the Santa Monica community. Five years ago, an active shooter by the name of John Zawahri walked on to Santa Monica College’s campus, resulting in six deaths.
Students at SMC were in the midst of their finals week, such as Alana Hunter, who recalls the incident. As 18-year-old Hunter was getting ready to take a final for her Philosophy 1 class in the Humanities and Social Sciences building on the school's main campus, she recalls a student walking into the classroom, alerting the students and professor of an active shooter on campus.
"We heard gunshots a few seconds later," Hunter said. "We didn’t really know what to do." Alongside her classmates and professor, Hunter spent the approximated five-hour lockdown huddled in a corner of the classroom.
“I just couldn’t believe it, cause it’s just not something you would ever think would happen at your school," she said. "A part of me was like, oh my god, we might die."
The SWAT team safely escorted everyone in the classroom out to Pico Blvd. Looking back on the incident five years later, Hunter said she kept on hearing about more and more school shootings since the one at SMC.
“I feel like [school shootings] kept going on. People aren’t really doing anything. I feel like now people are really starting to make a big deal of it, and maybe there will be change,” said Hunter. “I just think it’s super important for people to realize that it can happen anywhere. Like it could happen at your community college, it could happen at places where you let your guard down. It’s just really important to remember this to prevent it from happening in the future.”
Santa Monica resident, Daniel Callahan, resides a few houses down from SMC’s smoking section on Pearl St. and says he was the first person on the scene when the shooter stepped foot onto the college’s campus. Callahan recalls that he was in his kitchen when he heard commotion on the street, leading him to go to his back door where he heard a gunshot. He then stepped out of his house where he saw a red Bronco car drive through the brick wall of SMC’s faculty and staff parking lot.
“When I approached the vehicle, I saw both of them,” Callahan said. He saw the bodies of father Carlos Navarro Franco and daughter Marcela Franco, who had both been shot in the back of the head. After Callahan heard a volley of gunshots, he hid until the shooting was over.
Callahan knew two of the victims personally, Carlos Navarro Franco and Margarita Gomez. “I met Margarita just cause she was always [collecting] cans… [She was] really friendly, quiet, very humble,” said Callahan. “You could tell [she was] a little bit uncomfortable with collecting cans in front of all these kids, but she did what she had to do for her family.”
Callahan also spoke of the kindness of Mr. Franco. “I always waved to him when he was coming down the sidewalk,” said Callahan of Franco. “He was the nicest guy, he kept this whole area [of SMC] so clean and I don’t know what else to say other than it was tragic.”
To find out more information about safety protocols SMC has in place to prevent another tragedy, check out Active Shooter Protocol: Present & Future.