John David Whitehead wondered why he’d been crying and praying for four hours.
He sat outside the Armed Forces Career Center where Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez began shooting Thursday morning. Behind Whitehead, the sky was black, there was lightning in the distance and big rain drops started to fall.
But the hundreds of people around him at a memorial outside the center didn’t leave. They were silent. They slowly shuffled their feet forward. They didn’t talk, they didn’t make eye contact, they just stared at a makeshift memorial in a trance. Some shook their heads in disbelief. Some were crying, holding loved ones.
Whitehead, from Knoxville, drove to Chattanooga to visit his wife’s family.
“Why am I here?” he paused, and looked at the ground. “Kinda been asking myself that.”