OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Mindy Corporon Losen, who lost both her 14-year-old son and her 69-year-old father Sunday when they were ambushed outside the Jewish Community Center, gave a moving statement Monday afternoon about what she remembers from Sunday, and how she’s coping with such a profound loss.
“Because there has been so much outpouring, we didn’t want to hide and not let people grieve with us, and so that’s why we’re here,” Losen said at the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan.
She began by telling reporters that she did not have a prepared statement, but even without it, she calmly described her son, Reat Underwood, and father, Dr. William Lewis Corporon and what she recalled seeing and feeling when she arrived on the scene and saw both of them lying on the ground.
Losen said she headed to the Jewish Community Center after a lacrosse match she planned to attend was rained out.
“When I pulled into the parking lot I saw that my dad’s truck was there and that the car doors were opened and I wondered where my, why my dad wasn’t just standing there. And as I pulled up I saw that he was lying on the ground,” she said.
Mindy Losen said her first thought was that he’d had a heart attack.
“Then very quickly I realized that it wasn’t that and I realized that my dad was in heaven within seconds.”
She said she ran around the truck and saw Reat lying on the ground, surrounded by two men. She said she did not get a good look at her son and thanked the man who grabbed her and pulled her away so she couldn’t.
“I saw, just that he seemed a little lifeless but I did not get a significant look at him before someone named Micky, who I’m very blessed for him, grabbed me and held me very tightly and pulled me away from the scene. And as I went into the Jewish Community Center then I saw bullet holes and the glass and then it started to dawn on me what happened,” Losen said.
Mindy Losen thanked the Jewish Community Center for how they took care of her in the moments after realizing her son and father were dead.
“I felt a lot of comfort. I felt God immediately. I prayed that Reat would survive. I prayed and prayed and prayed that he would survive,” she said. “But I later found out why he didn’t. I know that they both died from head trauma. And I feel confident from what I heard that they didn’t feel anything. They didn’t know it was coming. They were ambushed.”
She smiled as she told the media audience that Reat had given her dad the nickname “Popeye”, which is what the family called him and her mother is known as YayYay, also courtesy of Reat.
She said her son loved to debate, and the family around her at the podium chuckled at that memory.
She said Reat also made it into the summer STARS program at Starlight.
“So he was up and coming . But you know what? He was with us for a wonderful 14 years. He had a really full life for a 14-year-old and we were very blessed. I heard from his friends and I talked to his best friend, and they love him too.”
Mindy said the family wanted something good to come of this.
“We don’t know what that’s going to be, So we want people to let us know if they think something good has come of it.”
She said she spoke to the transplant group and expects Reat will be a tissue donor and hopefully an organ donor.
“He was 14 and he had his permit and he had already signed up to be a donor on his own, and they knew that,” she said.
She called the deaths of her son and father a horrible act of violence.
“My dad, our dad and my son were at the wrong place at the wrong time for a split second,” she said.
As she wrapped up her statement, Mindy Corporon Losen said she hoped it was helpful to other people in the nation.
“You know you have to reach to God; you have to reach to your friends and search your soul and that’s what it’s about. It’s about us who are living and it’s about loving and caring for one another.”