Like many LGBTQ youth, Scout, who was 21, struggled with mental-health issues, including thoughts of suicide. By 2017, Scout was in their second year as president of the student advocacy group. Monden and Scout were involved in Georgia Tech’s Pride Alliance. Monden was a petite black transgender woman, and Scout was white, bisexual, intersex, and nonbinary-that is, gendered neither male nor female and using the pronouns they and them. Monden and Scout had found each other in Georgia Tech’s tightly knit community of LGBTQ students. It thanked her for being the best friend Scout had ever had. There was something else in the box-a note to Monden. Giving them away is tantamount to announcing that you’ll never play again. Any obsessive player of the game, which both Monden and Scout were, knows that the cards are expensive and can take years to collect. Even odder was what was inside the shoebox-all of Scout’s Magic: The Gathering cards, bearing images of fantastical wizards, beasts, and weaponry. Monden thought it odd that Scout would come and go so abruptly. “Consider it a belated birthday present,” Monden heard Scout say, before her friend shoved the box into her hands and walked away without another word.Īfter closing the door, Monden went back to the couch, where she and another friend had settled in for the night to watch television.
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A bespectacled computer-engineering major, Scout had shown up at Monden’s door earlier that night, a green and white shoebox in hand. Was there really an armed man? If so, did he intend to harm himself or someone else? In the era of school shootings, tragedy that feels at once familiar and devastating is always just a trigger pull away.Īt that moment, Cat Monden was dashing around West Village, searching for her best friend, Scout. Campus police were dispatched to West Village, located less than a third of a mile from their headquarters, to assess the situation. A report of a potential gunman on Georgia Tech’s campus, situated in the heart of Atlanta, triggered emergency texts and tweets urging students to find shelter. The university had resumed classes for the fall semester less than a month prior. on September 16, 2017, a humid Saturday night. It looks like he’s got-he’s got a knife in his hand. “It looks like there’s somebody, like, skulking around outside. “Hey, I’m up at West Village,” the person said, referring to a cluster of buildings at the Georgia Institute of Technology, better known as Georgia Tech. The 911 caller’s voice was calm, almost cheerful.