Salina — The son of a Salina man is among the 13 people wounded in an attack at Santana High School in Santee, Calif., that left two others dead.
Larry Jackson found out about the shooting from television news Monday while he was working at a Salina motel. He knows now that his 19-year-old son James was shot in the hip, and is expected to recover.
But he didn't know that Monday afternoon, as Dan Rather was delivering the news.
"I didn't know that my son had gotten shot, but I started getting those jitters in my stomach," Jackson said Tuesday from California.
Jackson paced around his home, shaking and crying, unable to even make phone calls. Jackson's girlfriend, Shelly Blake, said she had to take over the phone to find out James' condition and arrange to get Jackson on a flight to San Diego, where James lives with his mother.
When Jackson and Blake learned a student had died, they didn't know whether it was James. About an hour and a half later, Jackson finally got through to James' grandmother, who told Larry his son had been shot.
"My heart just dropped all the way to the bottom," he said. "It was like an emotional roller coaster ride. I don't think anyone could say (how I felt), there is no way to really put words to it."
Finally, a few minutes before he had to catch his plane, Larry got to speak to his son.
"They exchanged I-love-yous, and Larry told his son that he was on his way," Blake said.
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