Andy Murray, tennis star, “I could have been one of the children killed in Dunblane” | On this day

“I could have been one of the children who were killed.” It is one of the few sentences Andy Murray manages to say when recalling the Dunblane massacre in 1996, in which 18 people died. This Friday marks thirty years since the attack. Murray, just eight years old at the time, had been at the school that morning, unaware that a gunman would soon make the quiet Scottish town infamous for all the wrong reasons. Years later, the same boy would grow up to become one of the greatest tennis players in history.

Thomas Hamilton was the name of the disturbed man who burst into the gymnasium of Dunblane Primary School at 9:30 a.m. on March 13, 1996, carrying two pistols, two revolvers, and 700 rounds of ammunition. He opened fire on the group of students gathered inside. Fifteen children and one teacher died instantly. Another child died on the way to the hospital. When the attack was over, Hamilton placed a gun in his mouth and killed himself.

The entire tragedy unfolded in just a few minutes, yet it permanently marked the history of the small Scottish commuter town. A peaceful place whose main landmark had long been its 13th-century cathedral, located in the center of town. That same cathedral remained open all night in vigil to receive the victims of the tragedy.

Thirty years ago, Judy Murray ran a shop in the picturesque town. She had once been a professional tennis player, like her own mother, but tired of constant travel and the instability of the sport, she settled in Dunblane to raise her two sons, Jamie and Andy, then nine and eight years old. The morning of March 13 seemed like any other day – or so it appeared until a coworker picked up the phone. “They’re saying on the radio there’s been a shooting at the school.”

Moments later, Judy’s mother burst into the shop shouting: “There’s been a shooting!” Judy ran outside. “All I remember is getting into the car and screaming at everyone to get out of the way,” she recalled in Andy’s biography Hitting Back.

“I left the car halfway and ran the rest of the way, but there were so many police outside the school that they wouldn’t let us through. No one knew anything.”

Judy was taken along with the other parents to a nearby building while authorities tried to clarify the situation. With no information and the tension mounting, the most agonizing moment came when someone entered the room and asked for the parents of the children in Miss Mayor’s class to step forward. “Part of me felt huge relief, and then immediately I felt guilty,” Judy later said, because the woman next to her began screaming and crying.

“That’s my daughter’s class!” the woman shouted.

Judy was not able to hug her children until after 2:30 p.m. Andy and Jamie did not fully understand what had happened, because they had not been in the gymnasium when Hamilton began the massacre. They were in their classroom, singing songs while hiding under their desks. That had been the instruction given by the school’s headteacher once he learned what was happening in the gym. His quick decision meant hundreds of children were spared from seeing the horror firsthand.

By then the news had spread across Dunblane: Hamilton – who had led a local Boy Scouts group – was the perpetrator. On the drive home, faced with the boys’ anxious questions, Judy pulled over and explained what had happened. Jamie remained silent. Andy did not.

“Why would Mr. Hamilton do that?” the young Murray asked innocently. He had met Hamilton through the Scouts and knew his mother sometimes drove the man to the train station after meetings.

“Why would he shoot himself?” Murray asked again. Even today he rarely speaks about the tragedy, often retreating into memories of his childhood instead. “I barely remember anything, but it’s also not something I want to remember,” he says in the biography.

“When you’re eight or nine and you get on a plane, you’re not scared. You don’t think anything can happen to you. When you get older, you hear about accidents, one day there’s turbulence on your flight, and you start to get scared. I was never afraid of flying until 9/11. The shooting was the same. I was very innocent and then suddenly the world came crashing down.”

“If I had been 14 or 15 it would have affected me much more. It would have left a mental scar. But I was so young that it didn’t affect me in that way,” Murray added.

The gymnasium where the shooting occurred was later demolished. A memorial now stands in its place, and for years Dunblane was known as the site of the deadliest mass shooting in British history.

Then, slowly, Andy and his brother helped reshape the story of the town. Visitors began to shift their attention from the school to the golden mailbox and wooden bench that commemorate Murray’s Olympic gold medal at the 2012 London Games and his 2013 Wimbledon victory – the first by a British man in 77 years.

Jamie Murray has also built a remarkable career, winning seven Grand Slam titles in doubles and reaching world No. 1 in the discipline. Together, the brothers helped Great Britain win the Davis Cup in 2015 – the country’s first triumph in the competition since 1936.

“When people think of Dunblane now, they don’t just think about the shootings,” Judy Murray writes in the book. “Now they also say, ‘Oh yes, that’s where the Murrays are from.’” She witnessed that transformation firsthand when Andy chose the same cathedral that hosted the vigil after the tragedy as the venue for his wedding in 2015.

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