Trolley Square victim seeks more help for at-risk teens

LEHI — Nobody asked Stacy Hanson to stand up and tell Sulejman Talovic to leave his hostages alone on Feb. 12, but Friday, speaking from the wheelchair that came from his failed heroic gesture, Hanson asked the question: Wouldn't you do the same?

In his first public speaking appearance since he was shot three times by Talovic during the Trolley Square Massacre, Hanson said he hopes people will hear of his experience and determine to be proactive to change the world to be better.

"(Situations like Trolley Square) are going to happen more and more unless we do something about it," Hanson said to a small gathering of people in Lehi Friday evening. "If you don't work for change, you can't expect the results to be any different. I hope you'll all think about this and think about how dear your families are to you and how much you care about this world and try to do something to make it better — a more peaceful, more friendly place to be — because in a lot of ways, we've just gotten completely out of whack."

Hanson shared his experiences Friday as part of Lehi's monthly Community Council seminars on strengthening families. Tiffany Berg, a member of the council who helped remodel Hanson's home to be wheelchair-compatible, invited the survivor to speak on being an "everyday hero."

Hanson isn't bitter against Talovic's parents or teachers, though he says they potentially could have prevented the killings, but he holds Utah's legislators responsible for not having proactive laws in place that target at-risk teens and identify their potentially dangerous behavior.

Hanson and his wife, Colleen, support a program called TeenScreen, which is a national mental health and suicide risk screening program for children. The program, developed by Columbia University, makes voluntary mental health check-ups available to children in schools, if parents give permission for their children to participate in the process.

Depression and other behaviors can be detected through the screening program, and parents can then be alerted about their child's risk. According to the program's Web site, www.teenscreen.org, 43 states — excluding Utah — have TeenScreen sites, but Colleen Hanson says if the state got on board with the program, tragedies like Trolley Square might be avoided.

"Our Legislature won't pass it because (they) think it's too invasive," Colleen Hanson said. "But it gives people a heads-up on what's going on so you can get (at-risk children) some help."