WINFIELD TWP — Everyone was shocked to wake up Thursday morning to the news that five adults and an unborn child were killed the night before in a mass shooting in Wilkinsburg, next door to Pittsburgh.

But for Carol Kroll of Winfield Township, flipping on the television news was nothing short of devastating.

“Those families ... I don't wish that pain on anyone,” says Kroll, who knows that pain like no other. Her husband, John, died in a mass shooting in Wilkinsburg 16 years earlier almost to the day.

And there, on Carol's television first thing Thursday morning, was a photograph of John's killer: Ronald Taylor.

Taylor, 55, has been on death row at the State Correctional Institute in Graterford since a jury convicted him of three murders in 2001.

A black man from Pittsburgh, Taylor only wrote about how much he hated whites, Jews, Asians, Italians, police and journalists until March 1, 2000.

Then, in a rage, he shot five white men, killing three, including Carol's husband of nearly three decades.

John Kroll, 55, a carpenter, had been hired to fix Taylor's apartment door.

Carol Kroll has had 16 years to try to cope with the phone call she received that morning. But yet there on Thursday morning it was fresh again ... pain, anger and remorse ... flooding back with the news of the latest shooting. Media, she said, used Taylor's photograph to compare the two tragedies.

“When stuff like this happens, it takes you right back,” she said. “Nothing has changed.”

Pain isn't the only emotion bringing her to tears. She's also angry at a society that's failed to put in place significant gun control.

“These monsters are running around with automatic and semi automatic weapons — that needs to be stopped,” she said.

She's stunned by a legal system that allows her husband's killer to live. Special ire, she said, is focused on Gov. Tom Wolf's decision to put a moratorium on all executions in Pennsylvania.

“If there's a question in a case, OK then, I'm against the death penalty,” she said. “But (Taylor's) case there is not question. He killed people ... The jury spent all that time in the courtroom, the district attorney did his job. Then someone decides, 'Oh well that's in vein. I'm going to overturn that and let them sit there.' Yes, I'm angry.”

Both Kroll and her daughter have written letters to the governor. She attended every day of Taylor's trial in Allegheny County.

She stays vigilant, and cringes every time she gets a phone call from a court official giving her an update on the status of Taylor's appeal options.

In her bedroom, she keeps the work hat John was wearing the day he died.

But she's also tried to live her life.

Kroll, 69, has a part-time job at the YMCA in Butler. Sometimes she does crafts, bowls in a Monday morning league, reads or watches TV. She has a big yard, and it's nearly a full-time job to tend to her garden.

“Then stuff like (Wednesday's shooting in Wilkinsburg) happens, and it takes you right back,” she said. “All those memories of that morning. They all come back. It never goes away. The shock and the pain it's always there.”

Without pause, Kroll says that what keeps her moving is the time she gets to spend with her five grandchildren, ages 9 to 3.

But those moments are bittersweet too.

“John never got to meet them. None of them,” she said. “We have to do what we can to tell them about him ... to keep him alive in that way.”

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“Then stuff like (Wednesday's shooting in Wilkinsburg) happens, and it takes you right back. All those memories of that morning. They all come back. It never goes away. The shock and the pain, it's always there.”

Carol Kroll of Winfield Township