Columbia Renix is embracing life with her daughter after surviving a school shooting that left her traumatized.
DALLAS — Pictures of her daughter mean more to Columbia Renix now than ever.
“Now, I take more videos of me if anything does happen,” said Renix, a Wilmer Hutchins High School teacher.
Renix showed WFAA a pair of eyeglasses. It’s a reminder of what could have been.
“Now it’s in my mind all the time of being like, I could not be here,” Renix said. “You’re going to have to go through life without me, and that’s a possibility now.”
It is a possibility that she recounts everyday after a shooting in April at Wilmer Hutchins High School. Dallas Police said 17-year-old Tracy Haynes Jr. opened fire inside the school injuring four students and a teacher, Renix.
“If I think about how I could have not been alive, then I’m only going to spiral worse,” Renix said.
She’d just finished breast pumping during lunch when she went into another classroom. That’s when she said she heard several shots coming from the hallway.
“We don’t know it’s a shot,” Renix said. “We just hear something like a ‘pow.'”
She said everyone got down and started crawling to a supply closet.
“I just see like my glasses in my hands and I feel like a burning on my face,” Renix said.
She realized a bullet grazed her face, breaking her glasses.
“Like, I could have lost my eye. It could have went through my brain,” Renix said. “If I didn’t turn my head, it would have went to the back of my head.”
That thought has changed Renix’s mindset and lifestyle.
“I don’t do anything…because of just like the PTSD from it,” Renix said.
She goes to therapy and said she’s been trying to get help from the district.
“They haven’t reached out to me at all,” Renix said. “Like I think denied my workers’ comp. They denied my soft leave. I got deducted my pay because I haven’t been at work.”
WFAA reached out to Dallas ISD who said they cannot comment on personal employee matters.
However, Renix said all she wants is support.
“I shouldn’t even been in that situation in the first place,” Renix said. “I should have been in a safe space.”
It is a sense of safety she now finds in her daughter.
“I’ve been able to see her start to walk,” Renix said. “I get to be there with her.”
She has a new outlook of just being grateful and valuing life.
Renix has started a GoFundMe. Anyone interested in supporting can do so here.