San Bernardino Shooting: VAR With Ties To Developmentally Disabled Community Expresses Concern, Anger

Wednesday's deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., not only devastated the community at large and shook the nation, but also disrupted the lives of a huge community of developmentally disabled people, according to an executive of a solution provider that helps provide their services.

The executive -- who was at the scene of the shootings not long after they occurred, and who said he lost two friends in the attack -- saw the terror on the faces of staff members of the Inland Regional Center.

The shootings, which left 14 dead and 21 injured, happened at the center.

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According to Keith Nelson, vice president of Vistem Solutions, an Irvine, Calif.-based managed services provider, the center is the largest of several nonprofit agencies set up in California to serve the needs of the developmentally disabled.

Nelson, who also serves as the vice president of the board of trustees of the center, was to attend a meeting at the center later that day, and learned of the shootings just minutes after they happened. He said that office serves a community of 32,000 developmentally disabled people in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. One of those people is Nelson's son, who has autism.

About a half-hour before he was to arrive Wednesday, Nelson received a message that there was a shooting happening at the building complex's conference center. Nelson told CRN that, at the time, he kept thinking something is always happening at the conference center, but that he would never have expected a terrorist shooting.

When Nelson arrived shortly after the shooting stopped, he used his identification as a trustee to enter the police command center before and during the evacuation of the Inland Regional Center's staff. He then met with the staff Wednesday evening. Two of those killed were close friends of Nelson's, he said.

Nelson said he wonders how the tragedy will impact the Inland Regional Center disabled community.

"There was supposed to be a dance," he said. "It was canceled. There is a big question of when it can return to normalcy. We don't know."

While the canceling of a dance may not seem like a big deal, Nelson said, it is to the disabled community members -- whom Nelson referred to as consumers -- as they require stability in their lives.

"For my son, like the other consumers, stability is important," Nelson said. "My son goes to work at the same time, returns at the same time. If he could, he would have breakfast at the same time, lunch at the same time, dinner at the same time."

Nelson has been active with the developmentally disabled community for years. He coached the Team U.S.A. floor hockey team that won a silver medal at the South Korean Special Olympics, and coaches a basketball team that has not lost in 15 years.

"These are amazing people," he said. "There's no discrimination within the community. We're starting micro-enterprises with entrepreneurs in the community. Just think, years ago we locked these people up. Now by law they are out in the community. It's our responsibility to work with them. I tell people, they aren't disabled. They have different abilities."

He told CRN that he also is concerned about the political reaction and media reports of the tragedy.

As reports about the shootings continued, Nelson said he found it harder and harder to listen to the responses to tragedy from politicians. He was especially angry at those in the government who referred to the shootings as a workplace incident rather than an act of terrorism.

"It was not an incidence of workplace violence," he said. "The shooter and the victims did not work at the Inland Regional Center. They worked at the California Department of Public Health, and rented the conference room for a holiday party. I couldn't understand why, two to three hours after, the president was saying this is an unknown act of workplace violence. I also had to listen to people talk about this in terms of for or against gun control."

Nelson said it is hard to not think of the San Bernardino shootings as anything other than terrorism.

"I'm not trying to be political," Nelson said. "People were terrorized. Residually, since we serve the developmentally disabled community, I saw people in the community think they were under attack. After the shootings started, my son and others were put under lock and key. So it was terrorism from when it started, regardless of the book definition."

Nelson also saw terror in the faces of the staff as they left hours after the shooting stopped to be debriefed. "They were definitely terrorized," he said. "I have to wonder how many good staff will be lost to attrition because of this."

PUBLISHED DEC. 4, 2015