Tony Montalto’s voice softened as he spoke about his forever 14-year-old daughter Gina Rose Montalto, a victim of the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history. On Feb. 14, 2018, a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School murdered 14 students and three staff members and wounded another 17 people at the school in Florida.
“That day changed my life and my family’s life forever,” Montalto said to a moved audience. “Now, no day will ever be a truly happy one as long as I live.”
Montalto shared a personal and powerful presentation as a guest speaker at the University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu’s third annual Hawaiʻi Threat Assessment Conference (HTAC) in July. Threat assessment is the identification, assessment, and management of threats to prevent incidents of targeted violence. HTAC focused on national best practices, data and trends.
Turning pain into purpose
Montalto is serving his third term as the elected president of Stand with Parkland—The National Association of Families for Safe Schools.
“I understand the importance of training and the need to fight complacency,” Montalto said. “The founding families of Stand with Parkland have chosen a path of instrumental grieving, turning our unfathomable pain into great purpose.”
The advanced-level conference drew about 200 attendees, including representatives from nine campuses in the UH System, public and private K–12 and higher education officials, local organizations, and state and federal agencies.
“I’m pleased to be able to present in front of this group,” Montalto said. “People who work on behavioral threat assessments are uniquely positioned to spot someone and get them off the pathway to violence before they resort to that.”
Asking local communities to step up
UH West Oʻahu Director of Compliance Bev Baligad, who also chairs the UH West Oʻahu Behavior Intervention Team, said she hopes HTAC attendees realize there is much to do within this state to prevent targeted violence.
“It isn’t enough to say, ‘We support or engage in threat assessment and management efforts in the state,’” said Baligad, who is also the chair of Threat Team Hawaiʻi. “We need more community members to understand what threat assessment and management efforts are, how it works, and to whom they can report issues that are not considered a crime yet. In other words, we need our communities to be a part of this statewide effort.”
Montalto also emphasized the importance of coming together, connecting, embracing all potential partners and working as a team to find solutions and protect students and teachers.
“Please remember the one thing that all communities in which a school shooting has occurred had in common: that was a shared belief that it couldn’t happen to them,” Montalto said. “Please, learn from my experience. It happened to us, and it could happen in your community, too.”
Read more at Ka Puna o Kaloʻi.
—by Zenaida Serrano Arvman
