A hero's welcome: Heart-wrenching cartoon shows Fla. shooting victim's arrival in heaven
VANCOUVER, Canada -- A Canadian cartoonist's depiction of Florida school shooting victim Aaron Feis being welcomed into heaven might just bring you to tears.
The cartoon shows a wide-eyed, smiling young girl leading Feis by the hand toward a large group of children and adults, presumably other gun violence victims.
"Come on, Mister Feis! So many of us want to meet you!" the girl says.
Feis, an assistant football coach and security guard at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, has been hailed as a hero after he was fatally shot shielding students from gunfire on Wednesday, according to multiple eyewitness accounts. He was one of seventeen students and faculty members killed during that violent Feb. 14 rampage in Parkland, Florida.
Cartoonist Pia Guerra shared the so-called hero's welcome on social media with the hashtags #GunControl and #Parkland.
"I wanted to take the standard 'all these angels are in a better place' trope and turn it around a little to show these wonderful, beautiful, brave lives...who should still be here to both prompt the viewer to ask why they aren't here while also paying tribute to Mr. Feis' act of love," Guerra told ABC News.
While Guerra is a Canadian with no children of her own, she said the tragedy in Parkland still hit her hard.
"How can anyone not find something to empathize with here? I don't have kids but I have a niece and nephew, a godson, a lot of friends of mine have kids who I admire the heck out of...how would I feel if this happened to them?" she said.
She said she hopes the United States will follow the lead of other nations in passing gun-control legislation and working to bring an end to the country's mass shooting epidemic.
"A country of 35 million people just north of you guys figured out the issue of access to certain guns and how it correlates to these events. Why haven't you?" she asked. "No, gun control laws won't absolutely stop these killings...but they will curb them by a significant amount and create a better society in the process."
