A Shooting in Wichita Falls Texas Leaves Two Dead – The day after we remembered those students who died in the Columbine massacre, we wake up to realize that while so much has changed as to how we handle random attacks, we are no closer to preventing them than we were in 1999.

In Hasting’s Book and Music store on the Southwest Parkway in Wichita Falls, Texas, a call came into police that a man had fired a shotgun several times and struck four people. The shooter then took off and went down the road to Toby’s bar and started firing at the patrons in there.

He struck one man in the chest from two feet away.

Police officers saw the suspect leave and pursued the vehicle. While they were setting up perimeter, they heard a shot. They went into the house and found the suspect with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. 22-year-old Ross William Muehlberger was taken to United Regional hospital where he was pronounced dead at 1:55am.

When all was said and done, two people, including the shooter were dead and four were wounded.

By overall standards, Wichita Falls isn’t a big town. It has seen big ideas and big dreams come to life over the years.

It’s the home of Sheppard Air Force Base, was once the training town for the Dallas Cowboys and in August of every year, hosts the Hotter ‘n Hell Hundred - a grueling century bicycle race that draws literally thousands of spectators and participants.

Super soccer player, Mia Hamm, attended Midwestern State University and the Grammy award-winning band, Bowling for Soup, knows the families in this town well.

I used to love browsing in bookstores at night. I’ve browsed through Hastings myself, but these days, I don’t usually browser any farther than Amazon.com and with incidents like these becoming more prevalent, I don’t even have to offer up explanations of my change in shopping habits to people anymore.

Over and over again, we read these horrific stories and ask, “Why?”
Why here? Why them? Why this guy?

More importantly, who should we be asking? Who has the answers?

Police are learning how to cope with these incidents more effectively, but who are the ones that are working to help us stop them from happening in the first place?

I hope someone somewhere is working on this before we become too accepting of this “every town” type of violence.