Paul Kerrer's piece on remembering James Holmes

Castroville Elementary School teacher Paul Kerrer was interviewed by the Herald about his recollections on James Holmes, the alleged shooter of the Aurora massacre earlier this month.

Later he wrote a piece on his memories about Holmes that first appeared in the New York Post and this week in EdWeek.

While I haven't been a big fan of "testimonial" pieces (I was at the World Trade Center once, my third-cousin met Bill Clinton, what not) the Aurora killings have turned my mind around. My family left the theater two hours before Holmes was said to kill and wound dozens.

But there's a more important element to testimonial pieces, like Kerrer's. They remind us that Holmes is like us, a person who attended fifth grade in our midst, a young man who has a family, parents, uncles and cousins who are very likely suffering immensely.

It reminds us that tragedies like this can happen to any of us. Just like the victims can be our sisters, our nephews; the perpetrators too can be our relations. So we need to be compassionate, not just to the Aurora families, but to Holmes' as well.