She narrowly escaped a shooting at Toronto a few months ago. But Jessica Ghawi’s fortunes were not as good this time when she was shot dead at one midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora Colorado. She is one of 14 who were killed by neuroscience PhD student James Holmes.
Jessica Ghawi, who goes by the name Jessica Redfield, is a 24 year old known sports anchor, a blogger and an active Twitter user. She was sending tweets up until the moment she sat down in the movie theatre. It was then that the room got filled with smoke, causing many of those inside to duck for cover as rounds were fired into the room.
Jessica’s friend, who was with her in the theatre, heard her scream as her lower limb received a round of bullets. He pressed on her thigh to control the bleeding but he was hit as well. He kept trying to control her bleeding until he didn’t hear her scream anymore. Jessica was gone. So he crawled out of the movie theatre and called her mother.
On the Toronto shooting that she escaped, Jessica Ghawi wrote:
“I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday. I saw the terror on bystanders’ faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath.”
Her words resonate true today. It seems the Lebanese diaspora never manages to miss a tragedy. May she rest in peace.
Update: It seems Al Jadeed was mistaken. Jessica Ghawi is of Palestinian origins according to the Lebanese Consulate in the United States.
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 
This is like Final Destination
May she rest in peace.
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This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach.
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Enno ma fi shi 7ada Lebnene yezmot shi marra?
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She’s Palestinian, not Lebanese ! R.I.P
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Yes I had already fixed it by the time you commented.
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Reading her quote and knowing what happened to her yesterday is bringing me to tears.
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this article , the title and the contents are Rude and impolite to the family of the girl.
the young girl managed to escape one shooting and died in the other one .
a young girl with a future ahead of her got shot by an idiot.
and the title of this article is ” she’s not Lebanese”
what is that supposed to mean? Hurrah she’s not Lebanese?
then the conclusion:
“Her words resonate true today. It seems the Lebanese diaspora never manages to miss a tragedy. May she rest in peace.”
So you wrote about her because you thought she was of Lebanese origins…so may the rest go to hell? ..
and then you update it and say she is not Lebanese ..
whats the point of this article? really?
what are you doing ?
She’s American neither Lebanese nor Palastinine
you want to mourn the victims mourn them all…
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This is a Lebanese blog. I address things from a perspective that might interest Lebanese readers – and they would be interested more when victims are Lebanese.
I corrected the article later on and that was it. No, this is not disrespectful to her family and yes, you are blowing things way out of proportion and yes, may all the victims rest in peace. No one said otherwise.
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