Bay Area residents say back-to-back shootings becoming hard to process

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- James Johnston and Miguel Lopez were born in different generations. Despite their age gap, their sentiment is the same.

"I'm disappointed. It's so much different our country than the way I grew up," said Johnston

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"It's not the way I expected growing up to be," said Lopez.

On Sunday night, Miguel and his sister drove to the supermarket to buy ice cream. After last Sundays shooting in Gilroy, followed by this weekend's shootings in El Paso and Dayton, being at a public place they say "felt different."

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"As I was turning in, I was thinking you know last time it happened at a Walmart, it can could happen at a Safeway. Even when I opened my phone this morning I saw that one of my friends was at a fair and all I could think about was what happened in Gilroy," said Suzette Lopez.

The mayor of Dayton Ohio says these acts of violence can happen anywhere -- even in her safe district.

"These are so random. There's no place where you could say I just don't want to ever go," said Mayor Nan Whaley.

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Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University, says everyone processes these shootings differently depending on past experiences.

"That's variable. It depends on people's backgrounds and some people are more vulnerable than others -- people who've had a history of violence in their own experience."

Plant recommends: "Talk about it with others. Be careful about exposure to all of these reports with young children."

But to Bay Area residents like James Johnston, a sense of trust is changing.

"I'm a little bit ready to hit the deck or make an exit. Which I never would've thought of before," Johnston said.