SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) – First responders are being urged to seek mental health support following a Sunday morning incident in Cedar Grove in which Shamar Elkins allegedly killed eight children, injured one more and wounded two women who remain hospitalized.
“Just truthfully speaking, they’ve never seen anything like this. And if you look across our country, there’s not many places that have,” said Cpl. Chris Boredleon, Shreveport Police public information officer.
The incident shook the Shreveport-Bossier community.
“First and foremost, we have a job to do, and we’ll take care of ourselves, and we have the opportunity. This whole community is hurting. And as police officers, we want to do what we can to support our community. But our officers are hurting,” Boredleon said. “The officers that responded in this scene, every one of them, including Chief Smith, we’ve never seen anything like this. This amount of evil violence that happened, and that’s what it is, it’s evil. It’s something that’s disturbing, and it’s going to take a long time for this community to recover.”
Mental health resources available
Eric Hoffman, executive director of F.R.S.T., said first responders need to address the mental effects of traumatic incidents.
“The addition of all that weight that you were carrying eventually it gets too heavy to bear. And I think maybe once the adrenaline wears off for this event, and all the response that the guys did over the weekend and gals, I think then they start to realize that, hey, that’s not normal. That’s messed up. I’m not processing this the right way. And that’s where we want to encourage them to make sure they reach out to us for care,” Hoffman said.
“This is just a real grave reminder that our first responders see hundreds of these incidents in their lifetime. So it’s such an abnormal experience our first responders go through. That’s why we set up our mental health program at FRST.care. We have a little button that simply says Mental Health Help. Reaching out there allows us to get free, confidential care. We’re going to connect them with a licensed professional counselor and make sure we give them access to that care immediately. We respond within minutes,” Hoffman said.
F.R.S.T. can connect first responders and citizens with Healing Minds for mental health support.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is urging people to get help if they need it.
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