A survivor’s memory of Tucson

Ronald Barber can’t stop replaying the morning of Jan. 8, said Jennifer Medina in The New York Times. Barber, who runs Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ district office, was in the parking lot of the Safeway in Tucson, greeting constituents, when he spotted a familiar face. Judge John M. Roll had stopped by to thank Giffords for her efforts to ease the caseload at the federal courthouse. “I said to him, ‘I will let her know you are here, and I know she’ll want to greet you,’” says Barber, 65. “That’s the last I remember of our conversation.” Suddenly, there was a “pop-pop-pop,” followed by chaos. “I saw the shooter, I saw him shoot Gabby, and then he turned his gun on me. He was just spraying. It was like a wave of his arm in our direction after he shot her.”

Barber was shot twice. One bullet, which entered through his cheek and exited through his neck, barely missed his carotid artery. A surveillance video shows Judge Roll pulling him to the ground, and then shielding him with his body; the gunman shot Roll in the back, killing him. Barber survived only because of that act of self-sacrifice and the unknown woman who knelt at Barber’s side, applying pressure on his wounds to keep him from bleeding to death. “That’s my angel,” he says. “That’s for sure.”

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