«Breaking News» CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin breaks down while reading Parkland mom's letter to slain daughter, 14

A CNN anchor broke down in tears while reading a mother's heartbreaking letter to the daughter she lost in the Parkland shooting almost one year ago.   

Brooke Baldwin read the note from Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa was one of 17 people killed by a gunman who stalked the halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018, during a CNN broadcast two days before the one-year anniversary of the shooting.  

Tears welled in the anchor's eyes as she delivered Lori's deeply personal words and photos of the slain teen flashed on the screen. 

'I want to get through this because these words matter,' Baldwin said during one of several pauses she took to regain her composure. 

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CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin broke down in tears on air Tuesday when she read a mother's heartbreaking letter to the daughter she lost in the Parkland shooting almost one year ago

Baldwin struggled to keep her composure as she read the emotional note published this week by Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa (left and right) was one of 17 people killed by a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018

The letter from Lori Alhadeff details her last moments with daughter Alyssa (above together)

The CNN host had to pause and take a deep breath several times while reading the heartfelt letter. 'I want to get through this because these words matter,' Baldwin said

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Baldwin read the letter after reporting a segment about congressional Democrats re-introducing legislation that would ban high-capacity magazines in an effort to prevent similar tragedies. 

Her voice shook as she spoke of Lori's last moments with Alyssa before she left for school on Valentines Day.

'I remember you weren’t looking forward to going to school that day,' the mother wrote in the letter. 'Like many 14 year old girls, you wanted a Valentine and were disappointed that you didn’t have one. High school love is magic. I was 14 once and those butterflies had whirled inside of me too.

'I wanted that for you.'

Lori wrote that the last words she exchanged with her daughter were 'I love you' and 'I love you, too'.     

The letter, published in a post on dearworld.org, ended with Lori saying: 'I wish I could take all the bullets for you.

'As I remember you, grief washes over me. But that grief emboldens me to fight for change.' 

MOTHER'S LETTER TO DAUGHTER KILLED IN PARKLAND MASSACRE

Lori Alhadeff's 14-year-old daughter Alyssa was one of 17 people killed by a gunman who stalked the halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018. 

The grief-stricken mother penned the letter below ahead of the one year anniversary of the shooting. 

Dear Alyssa,

It’s Valentine’s Day. A day full of love, chocolates and flowers.

For me, it is more than that now. Last Valentine’s Day was the last time I saw you. You wore a black and white dress. Your long dark hair dangled. Your makeup looked just right. Of course, your white Converse sneakers protected your feet as you walked in to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Valentine’s Day is now about memories. Today, like all days, I remember.

I remember you weren’t looking forward to going to school that day. Like many 14 year old girls, you wanted a Valentine and were disappointed that you didn’t have one. High school love is magic. I was 14 once and those butterflies had whirled inside of me too.

I wanted that for you.

I remember the golden gift bag I gave you that morning. It held a pair of diamond earrings to make you feel pretty, a chocolate bar to make you smile, and hair ties so you wouldn’t ask for mine.

I touched your ears, putting the stems of the earrings through your lobes. You said you were ready to go to school after that.

You opened the car door.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too,” you said.

Valentine’s Day. The last time I saw you alive. ****A year has been a long time without you. So much has happened I want to tell you about.

I watch your brothers miss you terribly. They want you to know they miss fighting with you. They say thank you for convincing dad to get unlimited WiFi.

Dad fights for you every day. He’s your voice.

Grammy has honored you and became a school safety activist. We got a dog! Her name is Roxy and she’s a soccer player, like you. She kicks the ball around the yard, but sometimes puts it in her mouth.

And your soccer team...wow, what a group. They wear your number eight on their sleeves and have starting using it sideways to honor you. Infinity.

Oh, and I found out about the time you jumped off a bridge down by the beach?!

Alyssa, you jumped off a bridge?!****There are things I do in your memory that I never thought I could or would ever do.

See, a mother’s protective instincts don’t leave when we lose the ones we love. I talk to other moms who have lost children. We talk about you. We talk about their kids. But when we look into each other’s eyes, we see it. A fire.

I ran for the school board. I won! I screamed on national TV—words of rage directed at the President! I started a non-profit called Make Our Schools Safe and there is a law named after you in New Jersey--Alyssa’s Law.****Mothers know.

Intuition prevails.

Mine came as soon as someone told me there’d been a shooting at school.

I knew you were gone.

Rabbi Gutnick said, “Have faith, Lori.” I said, “No, you must start planning now.”

You were with me.

I knew it.

We lost 14 students and three teachers. 17 beautiful people we, as a community, needed to bury. You were the first.

The next day, Rabbi Gutnick presided and hundreds of people came from all over the country.

If you remember from Bat Mitzvah classes, shivas last seven days when a loved one dies. In those seven days, I got so many hugs from people who loved you. From family. From people I’d never met. So many that I injured my neck. People, in a sense, loved me until it hurt. ****It’s Valentine’s Day.

As I remember you, grief washes over me. But that grief emboldens me to fight for change.

I wish I could take all the bullets for you.

It’s been a year since I saw you.

You, in that black and white dress, those Converse on your feet, and that smile. I’ll never forget that smile.

It feels like yesterday.

I just want you back.

Love forever,

Mom

Click here to Donate to Make Our Schools Safe in Alyssa's honor.

Lori opened up about life in the year after her daughter's death in an interview with the Associated Press published this week, detailing how she wakes up every morning and sprays on Alyssa's Victoria's Secret perfume as a form of armor. 

The scent helps propel her through her whirlwind of a day as she fields hundreds of emails and juggles two phones - a constant reminder of why she ran for, and won, a seat on the local school board, started a foundation to make schools safer and why she called out Trump in a televised, gut-wrenching tirade.

'I smell Alyssa so I feel like she's more a part of me,' Lori said. 

Reminders of Alyssa are everywhere in the Alhadeff home: Photos of Alyssa along with her brothers, now 11 and 14. The silver heart necklace Lori wears, etched with a picture of mother and daughter. The stones painted with Alyssa's name, leading up to the front door.

Much of Alyssa's turquoise-colored bedroom remains untouched. Her retainer is still there, as are mementos of teammates and friends. Her yellow soccer jersey, No. 8, hangs on the wall. Her dirty clothes are still in the hamper by the bed.

'I haven't washed them yet because it's too hard,' her mother said tearfully. 

'I want her back. I want her back.'

Lori Alhadeff opened up about life in the year after her daughter Alyssa's death in an interview with the Associated Press published this week  

Much of Alyssa's turquoise-colored bedroom remains untouched. Her mother tearfully revealed that the teen's dirty clothes remain in a hamper near her bed because she can't bring herself to wash them 

Alyssa's mother keeps up a dizzying pace of advocacy, insisting that it helps her handle the grief, though there is the sense that if she ever allowed herself to stop she would be swallowed whole by sorrow.

'For me, it's honestly still 2/14/18,' she said, through tears that often come as she remembers her daughter. 

'It's not really set in that this is a reality for me. I feel that Alyssa is still coming home. She's at her soccer game and she's still going to walk through this door.'

When word of the shootings spread on that Valentine's Day a year ago, Lori rushed to the high school with her husband, Ilan, and best friend, Emily Price. Other students running from the school told them Alyssa had been shot.

They split up and went in vain to different hospitals as they looked for Alyssa without success. The Alhadeffs spent an agonizing night at a hotel.

The next morning, morgue workers would not allow them to their see their daughter. All they would show them was a photo of Alyssa's face. 

Alyssa had tried to hide under a table in her English class when the gunman sprayed bullets through a window. The 14-year-old was shot 10 times

'That's when I knew with 100 percent certainty that Alyssa was killed,' her mother said.

Alyssa had tried to hide under a table in her English class. The gunman, armed with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle, sprayed bullets through a window; Alyssa was shot 10 times, in the heart, on the top of her head and in her femoral artery - her 'soccer leg', her mom says.

The Alhadeffs would finally be reunited with their daughter as they planned her funeral.

'Her body was really cold,' Lori recalls. She tried to warm Alyssa with her hands, 'to bring her back to life.' She clipped locks of the girl's long, brown hair, to keep.

Seething, she asked her husband to drive her to the park where students and media had gathered. She approached a line of reporters.

She did not know what to say but she felt compelled to speak.

'A crazy person just walks right into the school, knocked on the window of my child's door and starts shooting, shooting her and killing her,' she screamed into a TV camera. 

'President Trump, you say what can you do, you can stop the guns from getting into these children's hands, put metal detectors at every entrance to the school.'

CNN captured the moment live; her rage was so overwhelming, her grief so palpable, that for a moment the shaken anchor struggled to speak. The outburst would be seen worldwide.

Lori Alhadeff unleashed on President Trump after the fatal shooting as she screamed for him to prevent another massacre

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After the funeral, Alhadeff's grief quickly turned to action.

A 44-year-old former teacher, Alhadeff started Make Our Schools Safe, aiming to harden schools against intruders and to train students and teachers so they know how to respond. Test scores don't matter, she says, if kids don't come home alive.

She and her husband marched with Parkland students in Washington, demanding gun control. And in May, she was elected to the school board.

'I have to keep pressing forward. I know that I can't bring Alyssa back but ... if I can change the life of one person...,' she says, her voice trailing off in tears.

Emily Price's daughter Abby was Alyssa's best friend. The two families moved to Parkland five years ago. Their girls shared the same birthday and quickly became inseparable.

Lori, Emily and Abby visited Alyssa's grave on Thanksgiving.

'There's some days that I feel like staying in bed and not doing anything and it just feels like it's the end of the world... (Lori) is able to draw strength from Alyssa on a daily basis and get up and be a force to be reckoned with,' Price said.

Reminders of Alyssa are everywhere in their home, including photos of Alyssa along with her brothers, now 11 and 14 

Ryan Petty, whose 14-year-old daughter Alaina died in the shooting, says Alhadeff isn't afraid to demand answers from school administrators when other board members are too timid.

'The other board members need to have the courage to stand up and ask the tough questions that Lori has started to ask,' says Petty, who lost his own bid for the board.

Her fearlessness is out of character for the petite and normally reserved Alhadeff.

'That was Alyssa enabling me to use my voice,' she says.

Alyssa was in many ways a typical teenager. She loved boys and going to the beach. She excelled in math and Spanish, was a gifted writer and captain of her soccer team. She wasn't afraid to speak her mind.

She didn't have a boyfriend and wasn't looking forward to Valentine's Day. Lori knew that and tucked a pair of earrings and a chocolate bar in a gold bag for her. Alyssa was delighted and Snapchatted about it on the way to school before her mom dropped her off.

'I told Alyssa that I loved her,' she says. 

It was the last time she would see her daughter alive.

Lori now permanently wears a necklace of her and her daughter a year after she was killed

When Lori visited her daughter's body in the morgue, she clipped locks of the girl's long, brown hair, to keep. They now sit in a glass box with Alyssa's name written on it 

Link hienalouca.com

https://hienalouca.com/2019/02/13/cnn-anchor-brooke-baldwin-breaks-down-while-reading-parkland-moms-letter-to-slain-daughter-14/
Main photo article A CNN anchor broke down in tears while reading a mother’s heartbreaking letter to the daughter she lost in the Parkland shooting almost one year ago.   
Brooke Baldwin read the note from Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa was one of 17 people killed by a gunman who stalked th...

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Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca





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