Isabella Thallas
On June 10, 2020, Isabella Thallas was senselessly gunned down in front of her apartment in Denver’s Ballpark -area, while walking her dog with her boyfriend. SugaBear & La Molly sat down with one of her good friends, Gabrielle Diecidue, and spoke with licensed professional counselor, Paul Krauss, of the National Violence Prevention Hotline, that provides free, confidential, expert support for people in distress and who feel compelled to commit acts of violence. If you or anyone you know is contemplating violence, please call 888-664-6652.
Transcript
SugaBear: 104.7 The Drop. We are Denver’s Urban Alternative. Thank you for joining us. It is Community Corner today.
La Molly: Yes sir. It’s Thursday.
SugaBear: We love talking about a lot of organizations here and people who are doing a lot of great work for this great community that we all live in. Let me explain our two guests today. We have Gabrielle Diecidue. I said that right, didn’t I?
Gabrielle: Yes, you did.
La Molly: Right out the gate, the professional folks.
SugaBear: And on the phone we have Paul Kraus. Are you here? Paul? Can you hear us?
Paul: I’m here. Yeah, absolutely.
SugaBear: Good morning. Thank you both for being here today. Okay, so today’s Community Corner could be quite emotional for a lot of people out there if you know the story of Isabella Thallas. Five years ago, June 10th, I believe, she was brutally killed at a young age, and there’s a lot of effort here to sustain the legacy and get information out to a lot of people. So you are a really good friend of Bella. And so Gabrielle, I just want to start with you and say thank you for your courage for being here and what you’re doing and your efforts in making this a little different experience for those people who may understand or know what happened to your dear friend. So thank you for your vulnerability. For those people who may not know, talk a little bit about the story.
Gabrielle: Yeah, well, it’s still hard to believe fully. It kind of feels like yesterday, although it was five years ago, but it was June 2020, the height of COVID. And I think one of the things everybody was doing was constantly walking their dog. And so she was one of countless people walking their dog in the afternoon. She was living with her boyfriend at the time near Coors Field. And next thing you know, as they’re giving the dog the command to go potty like we all do on walks with our dog, a nearby man who was clearly angry and spiraling opened his apartment window and yelled at them. I believe something along the lines of, “are you going to train your dog? Are you going to yell at your dog?” Some unspoken angriness. And I think that they really didn’t fully engage with him. They kind of just turned the other way. And next thing you know, he was firing an AK-47 through his window. I think he fired over 30 rounds killing her instantly. Thank god her boyfriend survived. But yeah, it was crazy to even rationalize or even come to terms with and understand how something like that could happen. But we did learn pretty quickly on that this man was calling and texting people before he shot her, expressing homicidal thoughts, how he wanted help. And so now kind of looking at her case from a preventative standpoint I think is really important of how we can do better as a society and a community to help people before it’s too late.
SugaBear: Indeed. And Paul, that’s where you come in here with the Violence Prevention Hotline. Talk about that a little bit and the importance and the correlation to this tragic story that Gabrielle just shared.
Paul: Yes. Well, we have been working on for a while what’s called the Violence Prevention Hotline, and our website is violencepreventionhotline.org. It’s receiving an update right now. Essentially what it is, is it’s a hotline that is geared towards potential perpetrators of violence. So like the 988 hotline for mental health and suicide crisis, this is for that same type of person except a person who is intending on committing violence for them to reach out anonymously and get help and be redirected towards mental health help or crisis services. Maybe somebody who’s afraid to call the police and/or for family members who are worried about somebody in their life who is acting strangely, making violent threats, but they’re also afraid to maybe reach out to the police or the authorities and they’re not sure what to do. And that’s what the hotline is about.
SugaBear: Got it.
La Molly: Gabrielle, can you talk a little bit about who Bella was and how the story of who she is sort of inspired you to turn her tragedy into a moment of compassion?
Gabrielle: Yeah. Bella had an abundance of love and light. I think a lot of her friends, including myself, definitely consider her as a rescuer. She pretty much rescued me in high school. We became really close friends in high school and she rescued me from extreme bullying. And I mean having that compassion at such a young age is I think what really got me through it. So she was a rescuer, she had empathy. She loved all. I mean, she would treat anybody and everybody the same. She really upheld dignity, a lot of focus on community lived experiences of others, understanding, listening. So I think this hotline really honors her in a lot of ways because she would be that rescuer. She would be the first to somebody’s side in a moment of struggle, in a moment of crisis, no matter what it was, she wouldn’t judge. And I know a lot of stories of her being there for people in these ways, and it’s inspiring, it’s impactful, and a lot of people said she was too good for this world. She’s too good. And I say all the time, she is the good that this world desperately, desperately needs. She really brought so much love and light and just lit up any room that she walked into.
La Molly: That’s beautiful. Okay, so how did you and Paul connect to work on the Violence Prevention Hotline?
Gabrielle: Well, it was a dream come true. I put in an inquiry on the National Violence Prevention Hotline website, and as you know, when you put on an inquiry on a website, you never know if they’re going to write back. So I prayed on it and right when I got that reply from Paul, I was like, thank you, Jesus. I’m so happy. This man seems amazing. So we quickly connected over Zoom and became fast friends and really just bonded over our shared vision and values and kind of what we both bring to the table. So we’ve been working together for over a year now. He really understands the counseling side of things, running his own practice. I understand the fundraising side of things, just being in that space with my family foundation. So we were able to connect and get all of this funding together so that we can actually launch a pilot program and start answering calls and helping people who are feeling violent tendencies. So it’s been a dream come true that we were able to connect and been at this for over a year now. We hosted a fundraiser in March, which was really fun and a great way to honor Bella through fashion and just raising awareness for her case. So yeah, it’s been fun.
SugaBear: That’s beautiful. Paul, would you like to add to that?
Paul: Yes, absolutely. Working with Gabrielle has been wonderful. She’s passionate and she’s really spreading awareness, and we’re a little bit different generations, but basically it’s been a dream of mine to find people that were interested in the cause to be able to prevent violence in the United States. I think unfortunately right now, whenever we hear in the news, people are just like, I can’t believe so-and-so would do this. I didn’t know. But what we’ve realized from a lot of research is that when you dig into almost all of these stories about people that injured other people and violently on purpose, and not maybe impulsively but more of these planned acts, people knew about it, friends and family were worried about them. There was prior police encounters, there were a lot of red flags. In almost every case we’ve been able to find that. So we said, why don’t we have a service that is trying to find these people when they’re in the stages of contemplating and planning the violence to find an alternative? So I am excited to work with Gabby and we’re assembling a team right now. We’ve got a few people working as we have had some limited funding to be able to launch the hotline this summer. We’ve got our number and we’re almost ready to go up. We’re just still trying to hire. We need volunteers and we need funding right now. This is all privately funded.
La Molly: And so can you talk a little bit about how, because your story is really interesting of what made you sort of want to create the National Violence Prevent Hotline. Can you talk about what inspired you?
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, obviously in 1999 I was at high school watching Columbine happen, and that was one of the first things that kind of woke me up to that. And since then we’ve had all sorts of shootings, stabbings, intentional murders of innocent people that were not even known to the perpetrator. So essentially I was like, why don’t we have something like this? So I just started searching on the internet, is there this, and I know we have 988, but there’s issues with 988. They’re mostly for the victims of violence, and we have the Domestic Violence Hotline, which is again mostly for the victims of violence. So I was like, well, why aren’t we reaching out and trying to find these people before they act? And so then I heard a story of Antoinette Tuff who was a lady in Georgia, and she worked in the school, and you can read about her, last name Tuff. And she worked in the school and this man came in with multiple guns and he was going to kill elementary school students. It could have been the next Sandy Hook basically. And she talked to him and said, “I love you. I’m here for you. We can end this differently. If you put down your guns, I’ll negotiate with the police and I’ll try to get them to bring down the charges, what’s going on with you?” She reached out to him and he started crying. He put his guns down, he surrendered, and he was holding her hostage. He could have killed her and all these children at the school. And then it kind of dawned on me, okay, these people, while they’re in a really bad place and have really bad intentions, there’s still a person there. And so how do we reach them and get them before they act? And they’re usually isolated. So I thought, okay, a hotline, a chatline that reaches out specifically to them and tries to reach them in their isolation or the family members or friends who are concerned who don’t know what to do. And that’s where that came from was her.
SugaBear: Got it. Gabrielle, I want to ask you, what would it mean for you with this Violence Prevention Hotline to be a part of someone being saved, right? And with this new line that you guys are going to put out for the public to know about and use, what would it mean for you knowing that this helped at least just one person knowing that you tragically lost your friend?
Gabrielle: It’s hard to put into words fully. It would be nothing short of fulfilling, and that’s really the goal. I wake up every single day and I think to myself, I want to save lives. There are lives on the line every single day, innocent lives at stake, and if I can stop just one shooter or one violent individual, how many lives can I save? So I always think about that and it would mean the world to me and more to be able to look at the data, look at the calls and say, wow, we’ve saved lives. We’ve successfully averted these plans. We’ve listened with compassion and empathy, and a lot of these people don’t really have a space or support system in their life to really have that outlet. So I think that they really bottle up a lot of this anger or rage. Of course, it’s at the end of the day, psychotic, right? I mean, you cannot rationalize taking other human being’s life, but I always say that failing to provide a support system for homicidal people is failing to save innocent lives. So I’m young, I’m 26, I’ve grown up seeing school shootings, seeing my peers, my siblings even, have nightmares and worries, and it would mean the world to me if I could prevent school shootings and prevent anybody and everybody being harmed in this nation because it is so preventable. A great deal of violence is preventable. And I remember Paul telling me that and showing me that, and it was awesome to see, okay, there is a path forward to save lives. It doesn’t have to be this way any longer.
La Molly: It is kind of groundbreaking to look at it from the side of the potential perpetrator. And that I just want to commend you for the way that both of you have been leading with compassion and like you said, empathy, because it can be really hard. A lot of us have been touched by violence, whether directly or indirectly, and to look at the potential perpetrators as humans who still deserve love and compassion, it’s really powerful.
SugaBear: In the midst of being hurt and going through a lot of pain and grief as well. Paul, would you like to add to that?
Paul: Yeah, I think that it’s easy in society to sit there on the internet and blame everyone and everything else for the problems when really what a lot of people need as a human is they need relationships, they need love, they need some respect, they need something to do. They need a vocation, they need community. And a lot of these people that have chosen this darker path have lost those things. And so I would like to say we could restore them. I believe most people are restorable unless they have a severe antisocial personality disorder or something like that, and oftentimes they will end up in prison. But there are plenty of people out here that are not lost causes. And I think as a society being the richest society that the world has ever known, we should be putting our resources into prevention instead of intervention. The costs of murders, the costs of these horrible tragedies are in the millions per incident. Lost work, people having to go to therapy for the rest of their lives, they lost their friends, trauma. They have to shut down schools or malls when these things happen. Economically, it’s a silly thing not to invest in these people. So as a person that lives in America, money talks and I say, economically, this is stupid. And second of all, obviously people are needlessly dying, then of course we have to put them through all the courts and everything if they aren’t killed in the act. These people need help, just like the people that want to hurt themselves. That’s why we finally decided that we need to help people that are suicidal and created the 988 line. And before then, it was only 20 years ago that it went national. So why aren’t we looking for people that are violent? Not every person who is suicidal wants to hurt other people, but I would argue that every person that’s homicidal and wants to hurt somebody has taken a step where they don’t care about their life. And I would consider them suicidal as well, that’s not their primary concern because they’re angry. So why don’t we deal with it like adults? We have the resources, we need more resources. Everybody out there listening says, oh, what do I do about this? Well, what you can do about this is email Gabby or I, violencepreventionhotline.org. Like I said, the website is getting an update today. We’re trying to get this hotline live. If you can’t give time, give money. It’s a nonprofit, it’s a 501(c)(3). If you can give time, we’re taking volunteers to help with whatever you can do, whether it be outreach, whether it be, if you’re a crisis counselor already and you want to do a couple hours on the shift, you can be involved. So we all can do something about it, and unfortunately, it’s going to take a lot of people to get the politicians to actually fund this, and that would be great. But right now we’re relying on private citizens. So we would appreciate any of your help out there.
SugaBear: If you’re just tuning in, Paul Krauss, Gabrielle Diecidue, the Violence Prevention Hotline, let’s give him all the vitals. I know you mentioned again, Paul, Gabrielle, what can people do, to tag along with what he just said, how they can help so we can sustain this and keep this going?
Gabrielle: Yeah, there’s countless ways to support the hotline. Like Paul said, the website is getting an update. So we will have a user-friendly interface to outline all the ways that you can get involved. But I say that there’s a role for anybody and everybody to get involved, whether it’s raising awareness on warning signs of violence, helping us with SEO ads, helping us with the marketing side, helping us with outreach in school districts to get our programming into schools, becoming a crisis counselor, volunteering your time on that to save lives. There’s so many ways to support and contribute, and I’ve had so many people come to me with ideas of how they want to help. So there’s really no restriction on the different things that you can do. And just raising awareness, going to people in your community, telling them, “hey, this number’s out there, you can call it for X, Y, and Z and expect this.” Just doing that alone can save lives. But I would say a big, big priority as we want to move as close as possible to 24/7 and have that support readily available, our biggest priority is volunteers who can answer phones as a crisis counselor. That’s really it, because it worries me every day that someone could call the line and we’re not available at that time, and then what happens? So that’s my biggest ask right now for support is volunteers on that.
SugaBear: For sure. Okay. So how can they get in touch with either one of you just in case they wanted to be involved or volunteer? Is there an email website? What can we do?
Gabrielle: Yeah, they can email info@violencepreventionhotline.org or they can go to violencepreventionhotline.org and fill out our inquiry form or contact us page. That’s how I got in touch with Paul, so I promise it works. Great way to get in touch. So yeah, we both have access to that email so we can both see those communications that come in.
Paul: And if you have any trouble finding any of us, I’m pretty findable. If you just Google Paul Krauss counselor, you’ll find if you’re just out there and you’re like, “I didn’t write all that down”, just Google Paul Krauss therapist, violence line, you’ll find me. You can just send me an email and I’ll redirect you and get you involved with our volunteer team right now.
SugaBear: Perfect. Thank you both so much for what you’re doing. Your work is so honorable. We appreciate you again, your vulnerability, your expertise on this, and you losing your friend, your wonderful friend Bella. You can honor her. She’s on 17th and Park, there’s a mural there. If you’ve seen that beautiful picture there, that mural. Thank you for coming by here today and we support you.
Gabrielle: Well, thank you so much for having me and taking the time to resurface Bella’s story. You feel as years go by that the story could be forgotten and that her legacy could be lost. So thank you so much for raising awareness and I know that she’s so proud from above that we’re really doing the work that needs to be done.
SugaBear: We love to do our part. Paul, thank you for your time this morning.
Paul Krauss: Thank you. Thank you everyone, and thanks to all of the listeners.
SugaBear: Alright, it’s 104.7 The Drop Community Corner.