TREMONTON, Utah — Just a few doors down the street from where two police officers were gunned down in Tremonton sits North Park Elementary, where students will attend their first day of school on Monday.
For Tiffany Taylor and her children, who live close to the house where the tragedy happened, they must walk past the house every day, along with hundreds of others, when the first school bell rings.
“It’s hard, we would come past this house every day, and it became really hard,” said Taylor, who is also the school's PTA president. "We didn’t want that to be the new norm."
Since no one has been inside the house where the shootings occured, Taylor and her husband helped clean up the yard.
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“So we came out and started over there in the corner, and before we got halfway, we had neighbors and people walking up with shovels, wheelbarrows, buckets, everything,” Taylor said.
On Thursday, the neighborhood was filled with helping hands, and what started small turned into mounds of dirt and piles of rocks.
“I live across the street, and it just, it’s been very healing and rewarding for all of us. Just very cleansing,” added Laura, another neighbor.
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The city also had crews out on tractors, with the city’s mayor, Lyle Holmgren, on one helping smooth out the property.
“Piles of dirt, cleaning it up, and making it something so it’s respectable for the whole community,” Mayor Holmgren said.
Donations have also poured in with people looking to help the cleanup project, and new sod was given to fix the lawn.
While no one can undo the tragedy, the community hopes it can create something new.
“As neighbors, like I said, we have just been grieving, and to be able to change some of the memories that have happened here,” Taylor said. "To see how the community has come together, to see how we can help each other, heal together, work together has been, I don’t even know if there’s a word to describe how incredible it’s been."
