‘These kids cannot be drinking and having guns,’ mother says
Eight months after Claire Thompson, a 20-year-old Sammamish native, was fatally shot at a Redmond house party, Diane Benveniste gathered with her husband, son and her deceased daughter’s friends in a room at the King County Courthouse in Seattle.
They watched as 22-year-old Cornelius De Jong IV of Redmond pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter on Sept. 17 and was sentenced to 27 months in prison.
“I’m still wounded so it’s hard for me to talk about it,” Benveniste said last week. “It was an accident and I understand that, but the bottom line is — and this goes to community education — these kids cannot be drinking and having guns. It’s the same thing as drinking and driving; we don’t teach them about drinking and guns, but we should.”
The recent shooting threat at Skyline High in Sammamish also affected Benveniste, who feels that kids need to look inside themselves, feel they’re not superior to anyone else, stop bullying others and get along with others.
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