04/08/2026
For those of you who donāt know, I am an artist and vendor. I work and sell at community markets, which has been a very exciting and rewarding experience. On Saturday, April 4 2026, there was a shooting in Piedmont Park while I was working as a vendor for 404 Day. My fiance, and I, were at my booth when the first shots rang out. The rest of the night was full of crowd stampedes, sporadic gunshots, taking cover, trying to get answers, spotting fleeing gunmen, flagging down police to try to relay information, calling 911 and being placed on hold, finding cop cars with officers in or around them, and posting there to breathe, contact loved ones, get information, relay it, etc. When an event is shut down and people are fleeing, guess what weāre doing? Weāre staying with our businesses. My entire business was in my tent, half-packed. I had to continually abandon my inventory, which is worth thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of effort. I am not alone in this. We had NO communication from event organizers, aside from a message around 5pm (before the first gunshots) that we were required to stay put and not begin packing up until 9pm. Shots rang out *BEFORE* 9pm. There were stalled vehicles in the parking deck. none of us were able to get to our cars, get our cars into the park, load our vehicles, and then leave the event. Trying to make a long story shorter: we were stranded with no communication, plan, access to our cars, ability to get into the park even if we *did* get our cars, access to food/water/bathrooms/any information whatsoever. Weāre obviously traumatized, devastated at the loss of an innocent, young, human life, and holding space for everybody else who experienced this trauma. Iām very proud of Brad and I and how we were able to show up for each other, work together under pressure, and just move through this ordeal. We were able to help a lot of other vendors, and they helped us in turn.
Photo
1) free gift I give to every customer, which was strewn across the ground in the chaos. There is something about this image that will forever be burned into my mind, bc we were having such a fun day
2) where Brad and I took cover in park