Daniel Her­nan­dez, intern, stays by Gabrielle Gif­fords’ side:

Daniel Her­nan­dez had been U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Gif­fords’ intern for five days when she was shot Sat­ur­day out­side Tucson. 

The junior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona was help­ing check peo­ple in at the “Con­gress on Your Cor­ner” event when he heard gun­fire. He was about 30 feet from the con­gress­woman. When the shots began, he ran toward them.

Her­nan­dez, an unpaid intern who had­n’t even fin­ished his first week on the job, ran toward the shoot­ing. He admin­is­tered first aid, nev­er wor­ry­ing that his clothes were soaked through with blood (until his fam­i­ly brought him clean clothes and the FBI took the old ones as evi­dence). And thanks to his self­less­ness and brav­ery, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Gif­fords is alive:

The fact that Her­nan­dez was near­by and able to react quick­ly prob­a­bly saved Gif­fords’ life, said state Rep. Matt Heinz, D‑Tucson, [] a hos­pi­tal physi­cian. He talked to Her­nan­dez at the hos­pi­tal after the shooting.

Shoot­er Jared Lough­n­er’s home safe includ­ed files which, accord­ing to an FBI affi­davit, indi­cat­ed his plan was to assas­si­nate Gif­fords, but author­i­ties have not described any motive. Lough­n­er seems to have walked out of the super­mar­ket where he’d got­ten change for his taxi dri­ver, then shot Gif­fords in the left fore­head, and fired at the crowd. A woman wound­ed in the open­ing bar­rage of gun­fire fought with Lough­n­er as he tried to reload. Before he could begin fir­ing again, oth­er bystanders sub­dued him.
The self­less­ness and courage is astonishing.

The incom­pre­hen­si­ble mad­ness of the shoot­ing, though, is best rep­re­sent­ed by the death of 9 year-old Christi­na Greene. The 4th grad­er was born on a day of tragedy, Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, and was fea­tured in Faces of Hope, a book about the babies born on that day. She was recent­ly elect­ed to her school’s stu­dent coun­cil, and her fam­i­ly remem­bers her as a lover of hors­es, bal­let, swim­ming, and base­ball. Her grand­fa­ther was a Major League pitch­er, her father is a scout for the Dodgers, and Christi­na was the only girl on her Lit­tle League team.

She was at the super­mar­ket that day because a neigh­bor, know­ing of Christi­na’s polit­i­cal vic­to­ry at school, took her to vis­it her Con­gress­woman. Jared Lough­n­er shot her after putting a bul­let through his elect­ed Rep­re­sen­ta­tive’s head.

Our world is impov­er­ished by the loss of Christi­na Greene, of judge John Roll, of Gabriel Zim­mer­man (Rep. Gif­ford­s’s com­mu­ni­ty out­reach direc­tor), Dor­win Stod­dard (who died shel­ter­ing his wife from bul­lets), Dorothy Mur­ray, and Philip Scheck. Four­teen oth­ers were wound­ed – includ­ing two oth­er aides to Gif­fords – as was the nation as a whole.