Brother of Oregon shooting victim trying to ‘process’ loss, tragedy

Kinney, of West Palm Beach, was on a business trip in New York when he got a voice mail from his brother-in-law in Oregon saying that Kinney’s sister had not been heard from after a shooting at the Umpqua Community College near Roseburg.

“I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying because I hadn’t a clue what was going on in the news,” he said.

But after checking reports on his phone, he soon realized what was happening. A 26-year-old gunman had opened fire on the campus where Kinney’s older sister, Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, and her 19-year-old daughter, Shannon, were taking classes.

Kim Dietz, 59, was one of nine people who died in the shooting.

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Kinney, who lives with his wife, Alison, and their two daughters, Lilly Grace and Kelly, flew to Oregon on Sunday.

“I have not processed this fully,” Kinney, 49, said as he drove through mountainous areas of Oregon Sunday evening.

Kinney, who grew up with his sister in Southern California, remembered her as a free-spirited child of the 1960s. She was born in England, but the family moved to California when she was 3, and she graduated in 1974 from Mission Viejo High School.

“I always remember her as being very athletic,” Kinney said. “She was an extremely good volleyball player.”

Dietz and her husband, Eric, had moved from California to Oregon with Shannon nearly a decade ago to work at a winery called the Pyrenees.

Dietz loved the outdoors, her daughter and her two Great Pyrenees dogs, said Robert Stryk, the owner of Pyrenees Vineyards in Myrtle Creek, where Dietz worked as a caretaker for many years.

“That’s really the tragedy here, is that this is a woman who was just trying to better herself,” he said.

When Shannon enrolled in the community college, Kim decided she would also take some classes, Kinney said.

“When I last spoke to her about her classes, she said she was doing great and she was having fun,” he said.

Kinney said the classes gave Kim a chance to spend more time with Shannon and they would often commute together. Shannon was in a different part of campus from her mother as Thursday’s shooting scene unfolded.

She was not hurt and a staff member shepherded her and other students to a safe place. A GoFundMe account has been set up to help Shannon.

The students were taken by bus to nearby fairgrounds, where Shannon and her father awaited word on Kim. But eventually, the buses from the campus stopped arriving.

“There was no ‘next’ bus, and that’s when they knew something was wrong,” Kinney said.

Kim was in an adjacent classroom when the shots rang out, and according to published reports, she died while trying to block a door to the classroom. Kinney said that it was in the nature of his sister, a former park ranger and animal control officer, to try to protect others.

“While it doesn’t diminish my anguish of what happened, it’s a testament to her character of wanting to help others,” he said.

Kinney said he has had feelings of anger and guilt in the days since the shootings. He wondered how his sister could be taken by such a violent act.

“What was going to through my mind (when I found out) was, ‘How the hell could this happen?’” he said. “My sister would never hurt a fly.”