Above: A video about the New Paltz shooting on June 21, 2001. Produced by students in the Spring 2011 Feature Writing journalism class at SUNY New Paltz.
Ten years ago yesterday, 25-year-old Jared Bozydaj opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle on police officers in downtown New Paltz. The shooting, which injured one officer and killed a dog, rocked the usually quiet college town. In honor of the ten-year anniversary of the incident, the students of the Spring 2011 SUNY New Paltz Feature Writing journalism class tracked down witnesses, police officers, and Bozydaj's mother to describe the impact of the shooting ten years later.
The students, Andrew Limbong, Sandra Hamlett, Brandon Quinn, Kathy Kim, Andres Bodon, and Philbert Reid, have given the Watershed Post permission to run their multimedia coverage of the anniversary. Here's the intro to their project, taken from the project's blog:
In the morning of June 21, 2001, Jared Bozydaj took his semiautomatic rifle and started shooting up Main and North Front Streets in the village of New Paltz. He was aiming to hit cops, and he got one – Deputy Jeffery Queipo, who was wounded in the arm.
This kind of thing doesn’t happen in a small town like New Paltz very often, so we decided, 10 years later, to find out the long term effects of this terrifying night. We wanted to know how the victims are doing. We wanted to know how Bozydaj’s family was dealing with what happened. More importantly, we wanted to see if anything had changed because of the incident. Are the cops doing more to protect citizens – and themselves?
Here you’ll find stories about the reverberations of the shooting 10 years later. There are witnesses who still have trouble feeling safe in New Paltz, a mother who was inspired to become a prisoner’s rights activist, cops who have changed the way they respond to shootings, and an officer who is still struggling to recover from the trauma of that morning.
You can experience the class's in-depth coverage, including interviews and videos, by following the links below:
A story about Deborah Bozydaj, the shooter's mother, by Andrew Limbong.
A story on how the New Paltz Police Department reacted to the shooting, by Philbert Reid.
Lisa Phillips, the journalism professor who taught the class, told the Watershed Post that the project was inspired by the New York Times' coverage, on its City Room blog, about the 1960 Park Slope plane crash.
"Journalism is often called a 'first draft of history,'" Phillips wrote in an email. "After significant events happen, we often don't have an opportunity to explore the long term impact and the way the individuals and communities are forever changed. I asked the students ... to do a multimedia "second draft" of history on major news stories in New Paltz's recent past. This group revisited the early morning shootout that shattered the early summer calm of the village of New Paltz in June 2001."
The students of SUNY New Paltz's journalism program are producing some excellent work, in stand-alone projects like this one as well as their on-campus publications, the New Paltz Oracle and the Little Rebellion. We're impressed with their talent and professionalism, and we're delighted to be able to feature their work in our digital pages.
