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The Memorial Walk honors the victims of the 2014 Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting


The Memorial Walk honors the victims of the 2014 Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting

Ten years after a gunman opened fire and killed four students in the Marysville Pilchuck High School cafeteria, the community is remembering the shooting victims and many others affected.

The Memorial Walk begins Thursday at 7 p.m., starting on the field at Quil Ceda Stadium and going around campus.

Uniting Stories, a Marysville-Tulalip Community Coalition, is hosting the event and the Marysville Noon Rotary will provide candles for participants to light. Organizers ask participants to use the candles provided and not to bring candles from home.

Guests can park in front of the school and next to the stadium.

Jenny Phillips never misses the anniversary of that tragic day to visit the graves and memorials of the victims, including her niece Shaylee.

“Shaylee just loved her friends and her family. She really was a happy spirit. Everyone loved being around her,” Phillips told KOMO News. “I didn’t expect this year to be so hard, but it’s definitely taken its toll.”

She added flowers to a bench in an Everett park honoring Soriano while reading notes left by friends and family.

Phillips said these small acts of kindness and the memorial walk at school are of the utmost importance to her family and others.

“You can feel the love, you can feel the prayers. It’s actually a really big blessing that everyone has so much support in the community,” she said.

On October 24, 2014, 15-year-old Jaylen Fryberg lured his victims to lunch with text messages before opening fire.

14-year-old Zoe Galasso was killed instantly in the shooting. Four other students were taken to Harborview Medical Center, where 14-year-old Gia Soriano, 14-year-old ShayleeChuckulnaskit and 15-year-old Andrew Fryberg later died. Nate Hatch, 14, was shot in the jaw and released from the hospital a month and a half after the shooting.

“They were all really happy, smiling kids,” said Matt Remle, a tribal counselor who had an office at Marysville-Pilchuck High School. “They were a polite group. Many of the kids from the freshman class were close-knit and loving.”

“These were not isolated children,” Remle added. “They had some great families and have great families.”

All victims were shot in the head. Jaylen then turned the gun on himself and died from a self-inflicted wound.

Andrew and Nate were Jaylen's cousins.

Jaylen was a soccer player and was named the school's homecoming prince just a week before the murders. He was also a member of a prominent Tulalip Indian tribe family and was described as a “happy” and “good kid.”

Text messages showed that Jaylen had asked his ex-girlfriend to “please talk me out of this” a few days before the shooting. Others had concerns before the shooting.

Marysville-Pilchuck High School permanently closed the cafeteria where the shooting occurred after students “said loudly and clearly that they did not want to go back there to the old cafeteria.”

Jaylen's father, Raymond Lee Fryberg Jr., illegally purchased the gun that ultimately was used in the shooting while he was under a permanent domestic violence protection order. He was convicted of six counts of illegal firearm possession and sentenced to two years in prison on January 11, 2016.

The victims' families settled a lawsuit with the Marysville School District for $18 million in 2017.

More information about the Memorial Walk can be found here.

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