#hocounited
The Mall in Columbia re-opened today at 1pm, after the shooting at the weekend.
It felt subdued, but people proudly made their way around Mall, confirming that they were indeed #hocounited. People were sombre as they reflected on the weekend’s incident. There was an affirmative police presence, but not too overwhelming. Folks queued up to get lunch and went about their business, but above us, on the second floor, was the reminder of what had happened on Saturday morning.
The location of the shooting was considerately sealed off, and at the pond outside Lord and Taylor’s members of the public were encouraged to leave a flower and a message for the two victims and their families. Outside Starbucks a banner held steadfast in the cold wind – ‘Forever in our hearts’.
It took a deep breath to get myself into the Mall today, but you have to get on with life, and that’s what the Howard County community is doing. I felt proud of this strong community today – very proud indeed.
This captures the sentiment of the community
Beautiful words for the victims
Flowers for the victims
#hocounited
For video of the memorial and pictures of today’s events, see the Baltimore Sun’s write up.
ukdesperatehousewifeusa 
It’s nice that a community can come together in times of sadness. Unfortunately we have seen it a little too often here in Colorado just recently, but I do know that time eventually heals.
Hey Claire, Well said. I was there as well. Subdued … and moving forward. What a great job the county leadership, police, mall and related agencies and groups have done with this whole mess of a situation. Hey, I want to let you know that we have on HoCoBlogs.com a handful of local, specific tags bloggers can place in their posts to redirect a specific post to a specific category. You write a fair amount of hoco-local stuff, so I figure this will be useful for you. You can find out more about them here – http://goo.gl/Jkws1C. Thanks! And thanks for adding the “hocoblogs” badge on your site. Next party: Feb 27th at White Oak Tavern. @MissZippy1 is the co-host. ~ Jessie
Yey, I can make the 27th! Thanks for the list xx