A club ‘no one asked to be a part of’: Two decades on, Rocori shooting survivors reflect on lingering trauma 

Megan Butala said she walked out of Rocori High School a different person on Sept. 24, 2003.

She sees it in a newspaper photo depicting her after one of Minnesota’s worst school shootings, fear in her eyes, hands over her head.

Butala was a senior at the time of the shooting in Cold Spring. Her friend and classmate, Aaron Rollins, 17, was among two victims. Seth Bartell, a 14-year-old freshman, later succumbed to his wounds in the hospital.

More than two decades later, the trauma associated with that horrific event has followed a winding path for Butala and other Rocori survivors, sometimes brought on by news of school shootings elsewhere. The Aug. 27 school shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, the deadliest in Minnesota since the 2005 attack in Red Lake t