A poignant note scrawled on the arm of a Delaware second-grader during a bomb threat at her school has gone viral, the Delaware News Journal reported.
Vanessa, a 7-year-old who attends the Odyssey Charter School near Wilmington, wrote the message "Love Mom and Dad,” with a purple marker during the lockdown Feb. 7.
Vanessa's mother, Shelley Harrison Reed, posted the heartbreaking photo on Facebook, and it has been shared more than 111,000 times on social media.
"So my kids (sic) school had a genuine lockdown today," Reed wrote. "Some whack job called in a bomb threat. Police came and everything was fine, Thank God!"
Reed told WPVI her daughter "had found a little nook in the classroom beside a bookshelf and kind of tucked herself in there."
Reed asked her daughter why she wrote the message on her arm. Vanessa's answer brought her to tears, WTXF reported.
“In case the bad guy got to us and I got killed, you and daddy would know I love you,” Reed said her daughter replied.
"I can't seem to shake this awful feeling, feeling of sadness, fear and plain disgusts (sic) for this new 'normal' our kids have to deal with on any given day," Reed wrote on Facebook. "It's a very scary and disturbing society we now live in, and it's heartbreaking."
Reed's post — made one week before the anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people and injured 14 others — appears to have struck a nerve online.
Reed told The Hill she did not expect her post to go viral and was not trying to make a statement about gun control, the News Journal reported.
"That's not what this is about," Reed said. "It was just about our children feeling safe in school."
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