Note: On April 3, 2009, a gunman opened fire at the American Civic Association in Binghamton. For many, life has never been the same. Ten years later, we reached out to those most connected to the mass shooting in our community. This story was originally published on April 1, 2019

It's a winter's afternoon, in a spread of snow and close-cropped bushes at the gently rounded intersection of Clinton and Front, and no one is here.

A few motorists at the red light here do glance, through rolled-up windows, tailpipes spitting exhaust clouds, at the sharply hewn granite column, at the 13 bird sculptures that hover — startled, mid-flight — in a scattered circle around it.

This memorial has joined the anachronistic patchwork that is Binghamton's Front Street: car dealerships mixed with re-purposed grand old homes from the city's long-past heyday near a hotel with a checkered past, and brand-new developments catering to the city's thriving university.

And, just three-tenths of a mile away, is a trim, angular building with a squat sign out front, a place designed to be a refuge for anyone from anywhere in the world, where a gunman walked in on April 3, 2009, and killed 13 people before killing himself.

At the time, the mass killing at the American Civic Association was the seventh-deadliest shooting in U.S. history, horrifically tied to a number of other mass shootings, including the one at Columbine High School, which would mark its own 10-year anniversary less than three weeks after the ACA massacre.

Today, it remains the 13th-deadliest mass shooting, intertwined with Columbine, where 13 were also killed.

As we look back, 10 years later, the question on everyone's lips is: Where were you?

Where were you on the day that irrevocably changed our city, from our law enforcement procedures, to our unshakable memories, to the memorial to the massacre on Front Street? We have reached out to some of those who were most connected to pause to take stock of the immutable toll April 3, 2009, took on our community, including the family members most profoundly stricken by such tragedy.

The ACA memorial is built atop concentric circles of inlaid bricks, all bearing the names and the weight of those who donated money to make sure this monument was built.

The ACA Memorial was dedicated on April 5, 2014. Press & Sun-Bulletin / file photo

On this winter's afternoon, almost 10 years since the massacre, a gust of wind blows the snow from a few of the inlaid bricks in the ground. A message printed on one brick reads: "We will never forget."

Above, our 13 glass birds hover, illuminated at night from within. The glow, then, is ethereal.

Parveen Ali. Almir Olimpio Alves. Marc Henry Bernard. Marie Sonia Bernard. Li Guo. Lan Ho. Layla Khalil. Roberta Badaines King. Jiang Ling. Mao Hong Xiu. Dolores "Dinah" Cabonilas Yigal. Haihong Zhong. Maria "Mima" Zobniw.

The mass shooting stripped family and friends of their loved ones

A decade later, Lubomyr Zobniw hasn't moved his wife Maria's purse.

It's slung over the same chair in the same corner of the dining room where it's been since the day a pair of detectives carried it up the Zobniws' front steps, confirming that the family's beloved "Mima," a wife, mother and leader in the Ukrainian community, was gone.

"In terms of time, it goes quick," Zobniw says now, dressed in a Ukrainian embroidered shirt in his Binghamton home.

Many pieces of this family's home haven't changed in the past decade. Mima's books, cookbooks and cooking magazines are still stacked in a handful of bookcases on the first floor. In the dining room, a glass case bears framed photos of Mima, an image used for the engraving on her memorial plaque, Ukrainian Easter eggs decorated by her children, stacks of letters, declarations and, somewhere buried deep in the pile, a poem written in her honor, called "Ice Moon."

Widower describes day wife was killed in ACA shooting Lubomyr Zobniw's wife, Maria, was killed in 2009 when a mass shooter opened fire at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York. Kate Collins, kcollins@gannett.com | @kcollins213

On April 3, 2009, 60-year-old Maria wasn't scheduled to work. She was a part-time immigration counselor at the American Civic Association, and Friday was her day off. She got a call asking her to come in.

She did.

Ten years have gone by faster than Zobniw expected, and the decade has brought more mass shootings like the one that took his wife of 37 years. He encourages passers-by at the Front Street memorial to read Mima's story, one of 13, a lifetime of memories etched in granite. It's an opportunity, he says, not just to recall the circumstances of her death, but to learn from her contributions during her life.

“There’s obviously nothing good about (the shooting)," he said. "But it is good that it is remembered.”

The 'gigantic lockdown' at ACA became a catalyst for future drills

It had been two years since the Virginia Tech shooting, nearly 10 since Columbine. Mass shootings weren't the topic of conversation as often as they seem to be today, and certainly not in Binghamton.

Here in early spring 2009, the community was still caught up in the euphoria from the Binghamton University men's basketball team advancing to the NCAA tournament for the first time. Newspaper front pages tell stories of local parking ramp inspections, the mayor's bid for re-election and the start of Binghamton Mets baseball season.

Everything changed on April 3.

“People still talk about it: before the ACA shooting and after the ACA shooting,” said Rabbi Barbara Goldman-Wartell, of Temple Concord.

Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski You wouldn't expect it to happen at a place like that. Quote icon

In the years after the ACA shooting, Temple Concord started keeping its doors locked, and high school lockdown drills run differently, especially for Vestal High School's interim principal Albert Penna, formerly the principal at Binghamton High School — around the block from the ACA.

Lockdown drills are practiced often now, and Penna's memory always returns to what he learned from Binghamton's "gigantic lockdown."

"It's still with me," Penna said. "Without getting emotional, it was a tough day. It was a tough day."

Penna remembers addressing 400 freshman students in an assembly that morning when the call came in from Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski informing them of an incident down the street, how the school kept students in their classrooms — except for escorted trips to the cafeteria — for five hours.

On the other side of the closed blinds in the school's windows, ambulances, paramedics, police vehicles and news crews lined Binghamton's Main Street.

"It was a traumatic experience for everyone," Penna said. "It was a city tragedy, and it got national attention. It was a most unfortunate situation, and we just tried to deal with it in the best way we could."

After the shooting, first responders review tactics

With the benefit of hindsight, there are a few things Zikuski said he would change, like widening law enforcement's perimeter around the scene, making sure ambulances weren't exposed to potential gunfire.

But by the time emergency crews and law enforcement arrived that morning, the threat was already over. The gunman's rampage — carnage that changed countless lives forever and scarred a community's psyche — lasted just three minutes.

Law enforcement has made changes since it happened, like improving communication between police agencies so everyone's on the same page when they arrive to assist — an independent After-Action Report and Improvement Plan released months after the shootings said, among other things, that a mass fatality plan was not used to its full potential. It's helped with setting up command posts to delegate who should be deployed where.

But in many ways, the ACA shooting was an anomaly.

There's no security at the American Civic Association. It's a space where students learn to speak English and community members attend monthly events like India-Pakistan Collaboration Night, Middle East Night and African Pride Night. There are classes to learn Arabic, Spanish, Urdu, Turkish and Mandarin.

It's a nonprofit organization built to bridge the gap between ethnic communities, priding itself on its openness.

Going strong: How the ACA is still going strong 10 years after the Binghamton shooting

"You wouldn't expect it to happen at a place like that," Zikuski said.

When it did, the scene was unlike any other.

"Usually, these are scenes of chaos," he said. "In this case, eerily silent."

Chaos came later, as family members packed into the basement of Catholic Charities on Main Street, blocked from approaching the ACA and searching for information no one had.

By the time Dr. Jeffrey King showed up, the basement was "like a mob scene," he recalled, filled with people and with platters of food donated from local restaurants laid out for family members.

Earlier that day, at King's office on Riverside Drive, a phone call came in.

"Dr. King," a member of his staff told him, "you’ve got to pick that up."

Dr. Jeffrey King recalls how he learned his mother was killed in ACA shooting When Dr. Jeffrey King heard there was a shooting in Binghamton, he first thought of his son. It was the beginning of a "downward spiral." Kate Collins, kcollins@gannett.com | @kcollins213

King's son Alexander was a student at Binghamton High School at the time, and early rumors had indicated the shooting might have occurred there. But the call was about his mother, 72-year-old Roberta "Bobbie" King, who was substitute teaching an English class that day at the ACA. Many of her students called her "Teacher Bobbie."

A friend had dropped her off that morning. Just before she closed the door, her son would later learn, she'd looked up at the ACA building and exclaimed, "Oh, I just love this building."

Hours later, King watched as the crowd of family members began to shrink and wondered why he still hadn't seen his mother. He'd called the local emergency rooms. She wasn't there.

"I was trying to wonder if it was just my mom being the instructor who spoke English, of course, quite well," he said. "Maybe she was being interviewed at length, I was hoping, maybe I’d see her come in a car and jump out."

Zobniw held on to that hope, too: Maybe his wife had been one of the survivors who hid in the basement at the ACA. Maybe she was one of the wounded.

Maria Zobniw spoke at least three languages — Ukrainian, English and French — and her knowledge had always reminded her husband of something his father used to tell him about the family's flight from the Ukraine: "Knowing many languages can actually save you."

Language barriers would heighten the confusion in the shooting's aftermath.

Ehtisham Siddiqui still remembers the call from members of the Islamic Organization of the Southern Tier who were searching for another member, 26-year-old Parveen Ali.

She'd been born in Pakistan, and her mother, Sirag Bibi, who only spoke the seldom-used Pakistani dialect Pashto, relied on Ali, who'd been taking English classes at the ACA, to communicate.

The ACA shooting and it's indelible impact on Binghamton On April 3, 2009, 13 people were gunned down at the American Civic Association in Binghamton. Click to Play Binghamton's mass shooting: Survivors 'just ran,' a city still mourns Click to Play Son of Binghamton shooting victim says family left behind won't forget Click to Play Surviving a mass shooting: Binghamton ACA teachers, students 'just ran' Click to Play Binghamton mass shooting victim's son calls for gun control Click to Play Binghamton mass shooting claimed life of Dr. Jeffrey King's mother Click to Play American Civic Association shooting widower recalls day wife was killed Click to Play 2009 Binghamton American Civic Association shooting: Raw footage

Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Organization of the Southern Tier, immediately left the play he was watching at the Cider Mill Playhouse in Endicott and went to the organization's building in Johnson City to help with the search.

"By this time, news had spread all over that there had been a shooting at the American Civic Association," Siddiqui said. "But we still didn't have any clues as to where (Ali) was."

Ali and 57-year-old Layla Khalil, also a member of the Islamic Organization of the Southern Tier, perished in the shooting.

Their burials would be the first of the victims', in keeping with Muslim tradition to bury bodies as quickly as possible after death. Crowds surrounded the shrouded bodies in the parking lot of the Islamic Organization of the Southern Tier.

"It was very traumatic for everyone, for the entire broader community, but for us, this was the first time that many of us had been involved in an incident like this," Siddiqui said. "And we couldn't fathom what had happened."

When mass shootings hit other cities, it triggered heartache at home

Rabbi Barbara Goldman-Wartell led Bobbie King's funeral at Temple Concord in 2009. Nine hundred mourners came to pay their respects.

In the years that followed, Temple Concord would make the decision to add locks to its doors. First, they were locked only at certain times, but after other incidents, like the murder of congregation member Roz Antoun's husband, Binghamton University professor Richard Antoun, later in 2009, and then the shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, those doors were locked 24/7.

“Our whole community is traumatized when these things happen,” Goldman-Wartell said.

Show caption Hide caption Tina Nguyen, who is related to victims of Friday's shooting at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, talks to reporters outside the community center on... Tina Nguyen, who is related to victims of Friday's shooting at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, talks to reporters outside the community center on Sunday, April 5, 2009. She is surrounded by family and friends. Associated Press / file photo

There are other spots in town where tribute is paid to the victims, including a Town of Dickinson monument for Maria Zobniw, a bench at Temple Concord for Bobbie King.

Sacred Heart Ukrainian Catholic Church holds religious services in Maria Zobniw's memory every year, and on the Friday evening closest to the shooting's anniversary, Goldman-Wartell reads each victim's name in prayer.

For the past several years on April 3, a remembrance service has been held at either the ACA or the memorial.

The talk: How to talk to your kids about mass shootings

Gun violence elsewhere reverberates here in poignant ways. In 2018, some 2,000 students and community members joined the "March for Our Lives" effort to protest gun violence in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that year.

Their path took them down Front Street, past the ACA memorial.

Heartache brought the community closer

When David Marsland — his wife, Mao Hong Xiu, was killed in the shooting — joined forces with other victims' families to build a monument to their loved ones, he wouldn't stop working on it until it was complete.

"The first thing I thought of when I got up in the morning and the last thing I thought of when I went to bed was ‘How am I going to make this happen?’” he said.

They launched fundraisers, brought in design plans and implemented symbols from the victims' different cultures.

At the center is the granite column, sliced at an angle to represent a life cut short. The taller cast glass column inside of it, which is lit at night, represents the eternal flame in Judaism, a message that everything lives on, King said.

A step away from the center are the plaques: the names, birthplaces and stories of the 13 victims preserved in stone.

Above the pavement hover the 13 glass birds in flight, a nod to the shock that reverberated through the city and rippled beyond.

"They’re flying away, sort of how it echoed through the community," King said.

Remembering the victims of the ACA shooting in Binghamton On April 3, 2009, a gunman killed 13 people and himself inside the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York. Maggie Gilroy, mgilroy@pressconnects.com | @MaggieGilroy

The memorial was built with $220,000 in donations collected by the victims' families — donations to ensure the memorial's future are accepted through the Friends of the ACA Memorial Park Fund with the Community Foundation for South Central New York and the "Help Preserve the Birds" GoFundMe page.

Hundreds of people, from fundraisers to contractors, participated in the project. It was dedicated on a gray Saturday in 2014, five years and two days after the massacre just down the street.

At the time, designer Madeleine Cotts said the memorial was meant to evoke both the scope of the massacre and its impact throughout the community.

"It came from the thoughts and wishes of the families to create a lasting beauty to represent the wholeness of their lives — not just the tragedy," she said. "These were vibrant people, each with their own stories."

Among those gathered for the dedication: Hermanoschy and Valentina Bernard, who were 12 and 6 years old when their parents, Marc and Marie, were murdered in the shooting.

"In the long run, I think it was something that the community really needed to sort of say ‘This is who we are. What happened there, that’s now who we are,’” Marsland said. “What we did over here, the way that we healed and the way that we brought so many people together in one place to do something.”

Madeleine Cotts, designer These were vibrant people, each with their own stories. Quote icon

Lubomyr Zobniw attends every service.

It's hard, he says. But he believes it's good that these remembrances take place so that April 3, 2009, doesn't become just another date in history. Horror came to Binghamton that day. Maybe acknowledging that, he says, will help keep it from happening again.

Help the Press & Sun-Bulletin continue to provide reporting like this. Find our latest subscription options and special offers here.

"It only will be remembered as long as they see the relevance and there are people around who will remember it," he said. "Otherwise, it’s just a monument."

On this late winter day at the memorial, as the 10-year-anniversary looms, as passing drivers head toward their destinations downtown or toward the interstate, no one is there to pause and reflect. The snow blanketing the shrubs and the bricks will eventually melt, eventually return. The 13 birds will remain, perpetually startled, mid-flight.

But look: Someone has been here after all. Maybe someone who loved one of the victims, who still bears the daily weight of grief. Maybe someone who recalls the crushing horror of that day, or maybe someone who wasn't here then but is now. Maybe you.

In the freshly fallen snow, one set of footprints traces an intimate path around the 13 plaques bearing the stories of those we lost — and those we remember.

Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin reporters Anthony Borrelli, Kristen Roby and Natasha Vaughn contributed to this story. Follow Katie Sullivan Borrelli on Twitter @ByKatieSullivan. Support our journalism and become a digital subscriber today. Click here for our special offers.

ACA Memorial

What: American Civic Association Memorial Vigil Day.

When: Wednesday at at approximately 10:30 a.m. observance at the memorial at the intersection of Clinton and Front Streets, April 3: Survivors Tribute at 5:30 p.m. and a Vigil Service at 6:30.

Where: American Civic Association, 131 Front St. in Binghamton.

More information: Visit americancivic.com

Editor’s note: Though the identity of the man who killed 13 people at the American Civic Association in 2009 is public record and has been widely circulated, the Press & Sun-Bulletin has chosen not to include his name or likeness in these articles.