Parents share emotional look inside empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings
Jada Scruggs sometimes wonders what she and her husband Chad will do with the empty room left behind by her daughter, 9-year-old Hallie, who was killed in a 2023 Nashville school shooting.
Hallie's room remains as she left it that Monday morning. For her parents, Hallie's bedroom is a devastating reminder of what was taken from them, and of who their daughter was. There are Legos, Tennessee football memorabilia, and the books Hallie read together with her mom at night.
"All these physical things are tangible ways of reminding me, like, she was real. She was here. She lived with us," Scruggs said. "In some ways, this room kinda holds the space for her."
Hallie's bedroom is one of several documented by CBS News' correspondent Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp, who spent the last seven years asking parents whose children were killed in school shootings for permission to take pictures of all the empty rooms they've left behind.
"Empty Rooms"
Hallie was killed along with two classmates, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney, in a shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, 2023. Hallie's father, Chad Scruggs, was drawn to his daughter's room the day she was killed.
"I went into her room to lay on her bed to smell. I knew that would go," he said.
Jada Scruggs said she visits her daughter's room less frequently now, but her feelings when she goes in haven't changed. To Chag Scruggs, the room now feels like an "indication of absence."
"It feels more like a relic now," he said.
Some 2,000 miles away, in Santa Clarita, California, Gracie Muehlberger's bedroom serves as a reminder for her parents. The 15-year-old, killed six years ago in the Saugus High School shooting, adored her brothers and her Vans sneakers.
Parents Cindy and Bryan Muehlberger went to her room right after they got home from the hospital.
"That's where I spent, like, the next week or two. I slept in her bed," Cindy Muehlberger said.
Dominic Blackwell, a 14-year-old killed alongside Gracie, left behind a room filled with SpongeBob stuffed animals. A basket of his laundry still waits to be washed.
A toothpaste tube remains uncapped in the bathroom of 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff, who was killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
There's a library book, 13 years overdue, in the bedroom of Charlotte Bacon, who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
Why it was important to document the rooms left behind
The rooms are among eight that were photographed as part of the project created by Hartman, who began covering these tragedies for CBS News 28 years ago. He first covered a shooting at a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, two years before the massacre at Columbine High School.
At the time, the shooting was big news, with ongoing coverage. Hartman said that's often not the case for school shootings today.
"It still gets coverage, but it's usually a day or two. And people forget about them, I'd say, by the end of the week, many times," Hartman said.
That is what sparked the idea for his project.
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So seven years ago, he began writing letters to parents asking to photograph their murdered children's rooms.
"I don't think there's really a better way to get to know a kid and to remember a life than to look around that room, to stand in that space," he said.
"I wanted to shake people out of this numbness that I was feeling whenever there was a school shooting," Hartman said. "I was moving on quickly. I was forgetting the names of the children who were lost. And I knew the country was doing the same."
Eight families whose children were killed in five different schools agreed to let photographer Lou Bopp into their kids' rooms. A recent exhibit in New York displayed some of the 10,000 photos he's taken.
"I'm trying to take a picture of a child who's not there," Bopp said.
The photographs serve as a reminder that while the country moves on, the families left behind never do, Hartman said.
The project is now the subject of a documentary premiering on Netflix Dec. 1. It follows Hartman and Bopp as they travel across the country, visiting rooms.
What's next for parents and the project
The Muehlbergers were considering moving when they got Hartman's letter in 2024 but they didn't know if they could leave Gracie's room behind.
"It's, like, do you take a lotta pictures of it and then try to recreate it somewhere else? We didn't know what to do with it. And it really wasn't until this opportunity to work with Steve on this film that we started feeling a peace about it," Bryan Muehlberger said.
Earlier this year, the Muehlbergers sold their house and packed up Gracie's room. They found mementos, artwork, and cards she had made that they hadn't seen in years. For now, they've placed them in a storage unit, while they build a new life in Georgia.
They've designated an outdoor area on the plot of land where they're building a new home as "Gracie's Point."
"So peaceful, which is what we were looking for," Cindy Muehlberger said.
For Hartman, the project isn't over.
"If parents want us to, we'll continue to document the rooms, just so they have the pictures," Hartman said. "I wish this project would end, but I don't anticipate it will."
More than 160 children have been killed in school shootings across the U.S. since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Back in Nashville, the Scruggs have no plans to change Hallie's room but they did send some of her drawings and journals to an artist, Brenda Bogart, who created a collage portrait of her.
"Everything on this canvas is something that was made by Hallie's hand," Jada Scruggs said. "Brenda went through and noticed a theme of, 'I am happy. I am happy. I am happy.'"
Chad and Jada Scruggs hope the images of Hallie's room will help people better understand the person she was. .
"This is not a generic person, you know? It's someone that uniquely bore God's image in the world and [was] irreplaceable," Chad Scruggs said. "We just want you to know her, you know? She's worth being known."
If you or someone you know is struggling with the loss of a child, support networks are available.
