'Stronger as a state'
Huntsman praises talks with Leavitt on shootings
And it's that exposure to tragedy that brought U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt back to his home state Friday as part of a national effort to come up with ways to prevent another shooting spree that killed innocent bystanders at Trolley Square in February and at Virginia Tech last week.
The meeting in the state Capitol complex between Leavitt and law enforcement, education and mental health professionals didn't produce any solutions or recommendations, but those who attended called it worthwhile.
"We are stronger as a state, I can tell you, having had these roundtables today," Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said after the more than two-hour meeting in his office that included representatives of state and local entities.
Leavitt made it clear he did not expect to leave Utah with specific recommendations. "It was not about making decisions. It was not about reaching conclusions," he said of the meeting. Rather, it was an attempt to gather information.
Leavitt, a former Utah governor, is one of three Cabinet members that President Bush is sending to states where mass shootings have occurred. After Friday's meeting in Utah, Leavitt headed to Colorado to conduct a similar session.
In Utah, five people were killed and four seriously wounded at the Trolley Square shopping complex on Feb. 12 by Sulejman Talovic before he was killed by police. Colorado is home to Columbine High School, where two students in 1999 killed 12 classmates and one teacher.
The other states involved in the effort are Minnesota, Iowa, Tennessee, Texas and California.
Much of the discussion in Friday's closed-door meeting focused on dealing with the mentally ill. Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech student who killed 32 students and teachers before turning a gun on himself, had been ordered by a judge to undergo psychiatric counseling.
The court's decision that Cho was a danger raised questions about how the Blacksburg, Va., school should have reacted to his history of mental problems as well as whether he should have been permitted to buy firearms.
There weren't the same warning signs with the Trolley Square shooter, Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank said, making it difficult to find something that could have been done to prevent the shopping mall tragedy.
"That is a very difficult question. I don't know that there is anything," Burbank told reporters after the meeting. But he said sitting down with education and mental health professionals and talking about sharing information was helpful and will continue.
You can be the first to comment on this story.