BOB Weiss now only thinks about it every hour, it used to be every ten seconds for most of the last ten years.
It was a pain that stopped time for him, for his wife, for his two surviving children – the pain froze their lives.
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On May 23, 2014, British man Elliot Rodger, 22, invaded the streets of the University of California, Santa Barbara campus, using his BMW as an attack vehicle, shooting pistols and stabbing victims with knives.
He killed six students in total and injured 14 more before turning a gun on himself.
During the massacre, he stopped to upload a video to YouTube titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution.”
He also emailed a 137-page manifesto – “My Twisted World” – detailing the carnage he intended to cause.
He sent it to friends and family, including his filmmaker father, Hunger Games director Peter, and his mother, Li Chin.
He spoke of his hatred of women and living a miserable life as an “Incel”, which defines itself as an “online subculture unable to find a romantic or sexual partner”.
But their actions also terrified the grieving families left behind.
Bob’s daughter Veronika, 19 years old and heterosexual. As a student, she was one of those killed, along with her classmate Katie Cooper, as Rodger tried to enter a sorority house and, when he found the door locked, turned to the two closest girls. him, and shot them both dead at close range.
Rodger’s first three victims were his roommates, David Wang and James Hong, and a friend, George Chen, who were stabbed dozens of times with a 9-inch boar hunting knife.
‘WE ALL SPREAD’
Bob, 68, retired and now living in Cincinnati, is dedicating the rest of his days to repairing his family – wife Colleen, 55, Cooper, 27, and Jackson, 26.
“We have all fallen into the darkest places, our family has been torn apart and at least 90% of that is due to Veronika’s murder.
“We were very happy, this solid American family living in suburban Los Angeles, before this shit hit the fan. We were the Brady Bunch.
“We had a wonderful house and three beautiful children, all excellent at sports and academics, everything was happy. And then, ten years ago, it happened.
“The cracks started to appear, then they got bigger and bigger.”
The family moved from Los Angeles to Eugene, Cincinnati, Washington, and now back to Cincinnati.
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This caused the end of their marriage and, for a time, the alienation of their two children, but they have become close again and there is hope that one day the family unit will be complete.
It’s hard to believe, but Bob laughed recently, for the first time in ten years.
The sadness was so etched on his face that he practiced in the mirror to see if the muscles in his mouth would be able to smile again.
“I couldn’t go ten seconds without thinking about Veronika, imagining her lying on the sidewalk, bleeding to death. It was an obsession. I couldn’t get it out of my head, every moment.
“Now I’m sure I think about Veronika every hour of every day, but not every ten seconds,” he says.
“I went out to lunch with my friend Diana a few weeks ago and we were having a fun conversation. We were joking about something, I laughed out loud and she noticed my laughter.
“And she said, “I like that laugh of yours, it’s like a giggle.”
“And I said, “You know, I never laugh anymore. Seriously, I don’t even remember the last time I laughed.”
“This is part and parcel of Veronika’s death. That smile and laugh just doesn’t happen anymore.
“I even started exercising. I forgot how to smile and started doing facial exercises to restore the shape of my mouth, so I could even form a smile.
“I just walked around with a frown, I never laughed at anything.”
PETER’S RESPONSE
After Rodger shot himself to death, police found three semiautomatic pistols and nearly 550 unspent shells in his car. All were acquired legally.
His family knew he was mentally unstable, he had a therapist and talked about being isolated from the world, but no one had any idea of the bloodshed he would commit.
His parents agreed that he would move out of his mother’s Calabasas apartment to start over at Santa Barbara Community College at age 19.
Bob publicly attacked with the decision to move him 80 miles away from the family — and called Peter “a Hollywood bullshi**er.”
Peter didn’t shy away from the cameras at the time – he appeared on Barbara Walters, saying: “My duty now is to do as much as I can to try and stop this from happening again.
“It will be a long journey that will involve personal choices by individuals and families, public discussions, mental health reforms, a shift in culture – you name it.”
He created a mental health website, Ask for help. However, it has not been updated since it was created in July 2014.
Peter, also a talented photographer, has an incredible Instagram full of Photos of his travels around the world since the tragedy.
On your website RP Fine Arts, he sells these images for thousands of dollars.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Meanwhile, Bob, who was semi-retired at the time, tried his hand at being an Uber driver, selling solar panels and working at a radio station – but it would only last a few months, if that.
“My brain was hit by pain, I couldn’t even sell mattresses and I owned a mattress store,” he exclaims.
Bob has been on the front lines, campaigning for better gun safety laws since Veronika’s death.
At first, he supported the families of the Sandy Hook and Aurora Picture House shootings, starting in 2012, then he traveled the country campaigning and being present at the sites of mass shootings offering his support.
Unfortunately, Bob never crossed paths with Peter at any of these mass shootings or activism events.
He adds: “They knew Elliot had issues. They knew he was on the autism spectrum. They just didn’t know that he harbored all this repressed anger towards women. Nobody really joined the dots on this.
“But if he was only paid $500 a month, how did he get this arsenal of weapons? I never heard an answer to that question. I always wondered.
“They invested in their kids in the typical rich Southern California way – if you have money, throw money at your kids’ problems. A perfect example.
“He was in Santa Barbara, not attending the University of California, but a community college — and there was a perfectly good junior college five miles from his home in the San Fernando Valley that he could have attended.
“Maybe Peter loved his son, but with his son’s problems, he should never have sent him to Santa Barbara, he should have kept him at home.
“A note from Peter, just a note to people like us who your son murdered. Just a note saying, “Bob, I feel terrible about what happened to your family and what my son did.”
“Just something, just a two-sentence note that acknowledged our pain would have been nice.”
ACTIVISM AT WORK
Switching gears to activism, Bob adds, “I was an activist in the gun safety movement, I was arrested by the Capitol Police for participating in a six or seven person rally in the Capitol Rotunda.
“I went to Orlando to help the people there. I went to Las Vegas after the mass shooting to help families and meet with government officials. I went to Cidade Nova for a vigil.
“I knew everyone in the gun safety world, I myself was quite prominent for a few years. And we never saw Peter Rodger there.
“I was involved in all the groups, they took me around the country, I met with senators, governors and parliamentarians. I did all kinds of things and looked for the victims’ parents.
“But I got exhausted after about five years and had to step away. I just couldn’t do it anymore.
“There are so many mass shootings, after two or three years, Isla Vista was forgotten – people wanted to hear from the parents whose son was shot yesterday, not the guy whose daughter was killed six years ago.
“I felt like my “used by” day was over when they took the bread off the shelf and threw it away.
“I had to step aside and let the new people carry the torch.”
WORKING THROUGH TRAGEDY
It’s been a dark ten years for the Weiss family, but the dark clouds are dispersing.
They now live just a few miles from each other and Bob is genuinely excited about the future.
He says, “I can socialize, I can make friends, I can get out of my head now. I’m doing my best, which is pretty similar to how I felt before it happened.
“But like I said, I still think about Veronika every hour of the day and look at her photos, but I don’t feel all that darkness.
“For the last ten years, I think:“ Did this really happen to us?
“It’s another good memory of her now. You know, life has gotten a lot better, in many ways. I don’t dwell on the gory details.
“The next five years could be the best five years of my life. I overcame the tragedy.
“I feel like the clouds have lifted, it’s not a clear blue sky, but my pain no longer dominates every waking moment.”
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
