Former Oceansider speaks up at the White House

Oceanside native Andrew Pollack and his daughter Meadow.

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Oceanside native Andrew Pollack spoke to President Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 21, a week after his 18-year-old daughter, Meadow, was killed in the massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

“We’re here because my daughter has no voice,” Pollack said with his two sons by his side and speaking directly to the president. “She was murdered last week, and she was taken from us, shot 9 times on the third floor. We as a country failed our children. This shouldn’t happen.”

Pollack, other family members of the victims of school shootings and survivors were guests at the listening session where they shared their own stories in relation school shootings, and urged the president to take action. Pollack, a graduate from Oceanside High School, was the only one at the event who was a parent of a child killed in the latest gun slaughter.

“It stops here with this administration and me,” Pollack said. “I’m not going to sleep until it’s fixed.”

He highlighted school safety as the specific issue to address, and noted how quickly things changed in airports across the country after Sept. 11. “We go to the airport and I can’t get on the plane with a bottle of water,” Pollack said. “But some animal can walk into a school and shoot our children.”

Pollack believes more should have been done after the first event of this kind occurred, likely referring to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. He expressed how angry he is over the situation, and that it is a simple matter to fix.

“I want it to sink in,” Pollack said with tears in his eyes, raising his voice. “It’s eternity. My beautiful daughter, I’m never going to see again.”