Tucson Shooting Eyewitnesses Return to Scene

TUCSON, Jan. 11, 2011 -- Mellanie Fowler was clipping color-coded tags onto dress shirts inside the Sparkle Cleaners here Saturday when tires screeched and gunshots rang out just feet from the shop's front door.

"I could see it all," she said, looking out through the glass shop front to the scene of the crime. "I could see people falling, especially one of the elderly ladies, crumpled onto the road."

Jared Loughner is accused of killing six bystanders and wounding 14 in a bloody rampage that shook this suburban community, including many of the employees who work close by. The shootings happened at an event Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was holding for her Tucson constituents.

Fowler, 51, who's managed her store for four years, returned to the shop today for the first time since the shooting, reflecting on the importance of moving on and how trauma can make someone stronger.

"You have to move on. You just have to move on," she said.

Many of her customers didn't appear as brave. Only a handful meandered in to pick up their clothes, with many calling to have their dry cleaning delivered rather than have to get close to the scene of the carnage.

"I don't blame you, give it a month," she told one customer over the phone. "It'll be okay. Give it a month. At least we can think of it not as a random shooting."

On her first day back, Fowler said she has found strength in offering positive encouragement to others instead of dwelling on her own grief -- something she learned after a random, horrific attack hit her family 12 years ago.

"Someone tried to murder my dad in front of me and my children," she said, telling of how gang members stabbed her father in the driveway of her Salem, Oregon, home as part of an initiation rite. Her father survived, but the memory remains raw.

"I think sometimes bad things happen to some people to make you stronger. God thinks you can handle it," she said.

"In many ways that was worse," she said. "I wondered if they were going to come back for me and my children. The shooter here came for Gabrielle and those around her. If he came in and just started shooting up people randomly, I don't think I'd be here today."

Tragedy in Tucson: a Shopping Center Tries to Return to Normal

Neighboring shop managers and employees echoed Fowler's belief -- that even though customers may be slow to return to the traumatized shopping center, they needed to open their doors and reestablish a sense of normality.

Sarah Horton, a design manager at Casa Adobes Flower Shop, said she spent Monday fielding orders for flowers from customers online and over the phone.

Behind her, a standing arrangement of red roses set to be delivered to Mesa Verde Elementary School was one of many orders she filled for victims of the shooting tragedy.

"It's kinda surreal to be working on these. The people died right out there," Horton said, motioning to the front of the store. "But I have no anxiety or fear particularly. I just refuse. I just won't let my mind go to the what-ifs."

Four storefronts down, Mei and Linda peered out the glass door of the China Phoenix restaurant, which was eerily empty. Only one man sat eating Lo mein in a rear booth.

"Where are they going to park?" said Linda, pointing to the yellow crime scene tape still surrounding swaths of the parking lot outside the Safeway.

"People aren't sure they want to come here yet," said Mei.

Back inside the Sparkle Cleaners, Mellanie Fowler was preparing to head home -- and surround herself with what she says are the most important things to her in life.

"I'm going to leave a little earlier today because I've got to watch my grandson and I don't want to be crying," she said. "I want to be strong and positive. Babies can sense those things."