Photo by Sam Hodges, UMNS
Simon Speaking
Pam Simon speaks Sept. 25 at the Concert Across America to End Gun Violence in Tucson, Arizona. The United Methodist woman was wounded in the Jan. 8, 2011 mass shooting outside a Tucson area grocery.
Jared Lee Loughner was treated for paranoid schizophrenia before a federal judge ruled him competent to stand trial for the Jan. 8, 2011 mass shooting near Tucson that killed six people and wounded 13, including Pam Simon and U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords.
On Nov. 8, 2012, Loughner pleaded guilty to murder and other charges, and was sentenced to life in prison, with no chance for parole.
Loughner had attended the middle school where Simon taught.
At the sentencing hearing, Simon spoke, as did other victims. Simon described the “horror” of the episode but also the need for forgiveness. In interview, she stressed the mental illness that gripped Loughner.
“He didn’t choose that disease any more than a kid would choose to get cancer,” Simon said.
She added: “What is our faith if we can’t employ it in the worst of times? If the teachings of my faith say, `We forgive,’ then that has to be what I reach to.”