Craig Van Bruggen was on the phone with his wife when someone told him there was a shooter. Inside the Safeway located on Bend’s east side, he remembered hearing gunshots and running toward the back of the grocery store.
Eventually, he sprinted for one of the front doors and made it out safely.
“It was a pretty terrifying experience trying to make that last sprint,” Van Bruggen said.
It’s been one year since, on Aug. 28, 2022, a gunman entered the Safeway killing two people before taking his own life. The violent act rocked the community, leading to calls for stricter gun restrictions locally and across the state — but officials making those proposals have gained little ground.
The Safeway grocery in Bend, Ore., one day after a shooter killed two people in 2022.
Bradley W. Parks / OPB
The 20-year-old gunman legally purchased all of his weapons, which included two shotguns and a semi-automatic rifle.
Over the last year, a sense of normalcy started to return, with security guards now patrolling the outside of the Safeway.
Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler said she hopes that the community does not become “numb” to instances of gun violence.
“I think it’s still shocking that this type of violence happens every day in America, and happens right here in our community,” Kebler said.
In the days and weeks following the shooting, the Bend City Council discussed possible new restrictions on firearms. City attorneys told them local governments have limited capabilities to create those kinds of laws.
The Council eventually passed a resolution supporting Measure 114, an Oregon voter-supported initiative passed later in 2022, that requires would-be gun owners to obtain licenses from law enforcement and bans ammunition magazines containing more than 10 rounds.
Earlier this year, Oregon Democrats introduced legislation restricting the sale of firearms, including language that would have raised the minimum age to buy a gun, from 18 to 21. That part of the bill was scrapped in part to end the walkout of Republican state senators.
Bend City Councilor Anthony Broadman said he’s proud of the stances the Council has taken in regard to firearms. He was acting mayor when the shooting happened.
“I just remember the feeling of shock, because you never want to think it’s going to happen in your city, but obviously it is going to happen in your city,” Broadman said.
For Van Bruggen, learning to live with the trauma of that experience has been an ongoing journey. He hasn’t returned to the Safeway, and he’s more fearful of public spaces than before the shooting.
He had only lived in Bend for six months at the time, but he leaned on his wife and community at church for support, including another person who also survived the shooting that night.
“To have someone that shared that specific fear of being hunted in a public space with an assault rifle … I think a shared group support was really instrumental in my healing,” he said.
FILE: Craig Van Bruggen and Charlene Chew attend a community vigil at Drake Park in Bend, Ore. Van Bruggen was in the store when the shooting happened and said emotionally it's been a "slow recovery process."
Bradley W. Parks / OPB
Van Bruggen also wants things to change. He considers the two men who died, Glen Bennett and Donald Surrett Jr., to be heroes and he wants to work to prevent mass gun violence in the future.
“I haven’t done as much as I wanted, but it’s also something that I want to do going forward,” he said.
