Thread: Wimbledon, 2009
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Old July 3rd, 2009, 12:49 PM   #26 (permalink)
Wiseguy
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I'm watching Roddick and Murray right now. This might be common knowledge in the U.K, but I didn't realise this about Murray:

Quote:
Murray attended Dunblane Primary School, where he experienced the Dunblane Massacre of 1996. Thomas Hamilton killed 17 people, mostly children who were in a younger age group than Murray, before turning one of his four guns on himself. Murray himself took cover in a classroom. Murray says he was too young to understand what was happening and is reluctant to talk about it in interviews, but in his autobiography Hitting Back he says that he attended a youth group run by Hamilton, and that his mother gave him rides in her car.
Source: Wikipedia

Also:
Quote:
Tennis champion Andy Murray has described for the first time his struggle to cope with the emotional fallout of surviving the 1996 Dunblane massacre.
Murray, the UK's highest-ranking tennis player, was eight years old when the former scout leader Thomas Hamilton burst into Dunblane primary school and opened fire with a collection of handguns. Sixteen children and a teacher were killed before Hamilton shot himself.
Murray and his elder brother, Jamie, then 10, were on their way to the school gymnasium and survived by hiding under a desk in the headmaster's office.
Since then Murray has rarely spoken of the episode, claiming he was too young to understand what had happened.
But in his new autobiography, Hitting Back, which is published today, he describes how he has struggled to cope with the realisation that he could easily have become one of Hamilton's victims.
"Some of my friends' brothers and sisters were killed. I have only retained patch impressions of that day, such as being in a classroom singing songs," Murray says.
Murray, who was brought up in Dunblane, had previously attended a youth group run by Hamilton, and in the book he describes how his mother sometimes gave the former scout leader lifts in her car.
He writes: "The weirdest thing was that we knew the guy [Hamilton]. He had been in my mum's car. It's obviously weird to think you had a murderer in your car, sitting next to your mum.
"That is probably another reason why I don't want to look back at it. It is just so uncomfortable to think that it was someone we knew from the Boys Club. We used to go to the club and have fun. Then to find out he's a murderer was something my brain couldn't cope with."
He says: "I could have been one of those children."
Murray describes fight to cope with trauma of Dunblane school killings | UK news | The Guardian
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