
This article in USA Today showed up in my newsfeed this morning. I couldn’t help but cry when I read it. It’s about a 2-year-old boy, bloody and alone, who was found wandered the street in Highland Park, Illinois, where a mass shooting killed seven people Monday at a Fourth of July Parade.
Over the course of the day, strangers found him and mobilized the community to find the boy’s family as neighbors shared his photo across social media with pleas to help identify him.
The town rallied to help locate his grandparents and reunite the boy, Aiden, with his grandparents. But soon after, they received heartbreaking news that both of his parents had died in the shooting. Aiden McCarthy was orphaned at two years old.
People in the community organized to raise more than $2 million on GoFundMe as of this morning. “Aiden will be cared for by his loving family and he will have a long road ahead to heal, find stability, and ultimately navigate life as an orphan,” the GoFundMe page said.
Back at home with his grandparents on Tuesday, Aiden was still waiting for his mom and dad to come home. When his grandfather picked his grandson up from the police station, the 2-year-old asked him, “Are Mommy and Daddy coming soon?”
“He doesn’t know,” Aiden’s grandfather said. “He doesn’t realize it.”
I have a 2-year-old grandson and I can’t image what this poor little boy has gone through. It truly breaks my heart.