By The Associated Press

2 lives cut short: Remembering victims of US movie shooting

Jul 27, 2015 | 8:23 AM

LAFAYETTE, La. – One was a talented artist who sang in an all-female band and planted trees to beautify her neighbourhood. Another was studying to be a radiology technician and looking forward to a future with a longtime boyfriend.

Jillian Johnson, 33, and Mayci Breaux, 21, were shot and killed last Thursday while watching a comedy at a movie theatre in the city Lafayette, Louisiana, leaving stunned friends and family questioning how two lives off to such promising starts could end so tragically.

Police say John Russell Houser, 59, stood up about 20 minutes into the movie and began firing before ultimately taking his own life.

Last week’s attack was the latest mass shooting in the United States and the second in three years at a movie theatre. The shootings have not led to major changes in gun control laws as many Americans see gun ownership as a fundamental, constitutionally protected right.

Funerals for both women were scheduled for Monday.

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Friends of Johnson, like Pudd Sharp, remembered her as a woman of talent and warmth. At an event to remember the victims he pointed out people wearing T-shirts she designed and described her as a funny, talented and welcoming woman. He said she was a “tastemaker,” the type of person that if you showed up at a club or restaurant or an event and she was there, you knew you were in the right place.

“She was just a really nice person, just in the horribly wrong place at the wrong time,” Sharp said.

Breaux was studying to be a medical radiology technician at Louisiana State University-Eunice and was expected to start next week doing clinical work at a hospital in Lafayette — the same hospital she was taken to Thursday after she was fatally shot.

In Franklin, an old town in Louisiana’s sugar cane country, hundreds of mourners attended visitation services for Breaux Sunday evening.

Anne Oestriecher, a 52-year-old cousin of Breaux said she had been dating her boyfriend for years before the two went to the movie theatre Thursday. Rodriguez was shot in the chest but survived.

“They were planning their life together; they were ready to get out of school and get married and start a family. And she and Matt went to the movies,” said Oestriecher who spoke with tears on her face.

by The Associated Press

2 lives cut short: Remembering victims of US movie shooting

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