Uninjured Las Vegas Survivor Who Wrote of Multiple Shooter Found Dead at Home

Uninjured Las Vegas Survivor Who Wrote of Multiple Shooters Found Dead at Home

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28 year old Kymberley Suchomel, an uninjured survivor of the Las Vegas massacre passed away in what may be suspicious circumstances less than a week after the event. This death has set the conspiracy world abuzz, but may in fact, be nothing more than a tragic case of a young woman who was deeply traumatised by the events she witnessed.

Here is the local newspaper report of her tragic death:

http://www.seacoastonline.com/zz/news/20171011/vegas-shooting-survivor-california-charity-co-founder-dies-suddenly

APPLE VALLEY, Calif. — About a week after surviving the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, Kymberley Suchomel has died.

Suchomel, 28, who was not injured during last week’s shooting, died early Monday at her Apple Valley home, according to her grandmother, Julie Norton, the co-founder of the High Desert Phoenix Foundation.

Norton found Suchomel just after 8:30 a.m. when she arrived to care for her 3-year-old great-granddaughter, Scarlett. She believes Suchomel may have died in her sleep after her husband, Mike, left for work at 4:30 a.m.

Here is the obituary:

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/vvdailypress/obituary.aspx?pid=186942151

Kymberley Jo
(Snyder) Suchomel
July 31, 1989 – October 9, 2017

Kymberley Jo (Snyder) Suchomel, 28, went to Heaven on October 9th, 2017 and is now with her mom and poppy. She was born in Las Vegas, NV on July 31, 1989 to her parents Scott and Darlene Snyder. The family moved to CA shortly after she was born. In 1992 they moved to Nebraska where they lived until Kymberley was 16 years old. She moved back to CA to live with her Grandma Julie where she graduated from Apple Valley High School in 2007. On August 10, 2013 she married the love of her life, Michael Suchomel and they had a baby girl, Scarlett, on July 31, 2014, sharing her mom’s birthday. Kymberley was a loving, caring, compassionate, wife, mother, daughter and granddaughter. She is survived by her husband Michael, daughter Scarlett, father Scott, brother Thom, grandmother Julie Norton, grandparents Allen and Carol Brown, father and mother in law Robert and Andrea Suchomel, several aunts, uncles, cousins, and her two best friends Kelsie McConnell and Casie Barnard. There will be a hole left in our hearts until we see her again. A Celebration of Life will be held on Sunday, October 15th at 2:00 PM at Sunset Hills Memorial Park & Mortuary, 24000 Waalew Rd, Apple Valley. There will be a reception to follow. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the HD Phoenix Foundation in Scarlett’s name at hdphoenixfoundation.com.

The rumour doing the rounds of the conspiracy-verse is that Kymberley gave a detailed eyewitness account on Facebook on October 4, explaining why she believed there was more than one shooter in Las Vegas. She later died in her sleep on October 8.

The posts that people say belonged to her account have not been authenticated, but posts from friends verify that she did write about the shooting. A post shared on the “Auction for Kymberley Suchomel” Facebook group read, in part:

She was not murdered. Foul play was not suspected. Yes she survived the Vegas massacre. Yes she posted about it. Yes, posts were deleted, by her family. Along with her account. To STOP the harassment that they are receiving.

However, several pieces of evidence point to the posts most likely being authentic. First, we do know that she had posts up about the shooting that were later taken down because they had gotten so much attention. Her friend Ricky Ardito was at the concert with her and also survived the shooting. People went to Ardito’s Facebook page and shared archives of her Facebook posts, asking if those posts were really written by her and why they were taken down. Ardito did not say the posts weren’t written by her. Instead, he responded:

Because of unfounded rumors going around about Kymberley’s death that is putting extra unneeded stress on her family, they made her posts private.”

Ardito was with her at the Las Vegas shooting and is one of the people she credited with helping save her life.

If her death was at all connected to the Las Vegas shooting, what is more like – that it was  due to the stress making her epileptic condition worse or that foul play was involved. Either way, this was a tragic loss of a young life, far too soon.

Her friend Ardito, however, is being very vocal on Facebook about his beliefs regarding the shooting. He wrote on October 3:

In the aftermath of the shooting due to things reported by the media I had convinced myself that the initial pops were actually gunfire. After reviewing these memories, really thinking about what I saw and heard, and talking to my group, I am convinced that my initial gut instinct was true. The first pops were a string of fire crackers. One of the distinct differences about these pops versus the gunfire that followed is that the sound came from directly on the ground at the venue, and not far from us. Maybe 40 feet. There are additional details I have remembered that I may add in the future. I know this doesn’t agree with the media reporting, but I am 100% convinced the shooter was aided and signaled from inside the venue with these firecrackers.

The next important detail is that once we had passed Hooters hotel things we’re starting to seem a little more calm, if only for a brief moment. This is when we were trying to meet back up with the other two members of our group. We had considered sheltering in Hooters, then all of the sudden there was a massive panic and stampede of people trying to get away from Hooters. We started running again as fast as we could, unsure exactly what the panic was about.

Cassie Ardito wrote on Facebook:

I will add that although I know I’m called to love everyone if you tell me to “accept the facts given by the media” and “agree to disagree” on what I know I saw and felt (which I have yet to tell fully and publicly) I will tell you to eff off- on social media and in real life I don’t care who you are.

Also- Today I realized I’m not ready to leave the house, and I don’t even want to speak in “code” around the littles. So If you offer to help don’t expect to hear my story.

So we have the possibly suspicious death of a young woman who witnessed the Las Vegas event and spoke out on Facebook about what she saw and how it did not fit the official narrative; however, we simply do not know enough to be able to say much about the actual circumstances of the young woman’s tragic passing.

Snopes.com wrote a fairly well-balanced article on the subject:

_________
Snopes.com
Survivor of Las Vegas Mass Shooting Dies Suddenly

Kymberley Suchomel, who was in attendance at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas and fled when a gunman opened fire on the crowd, passed away a week later.

Among the thousands of people who were fortunate enough to safely flee the scene of the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas on 1 October 2017, as a gunman poured bullets into the crowd from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, was 28-year-old Kymberley Suchomel of Apple Valley, California.

Unfortunately, Ms. Suchomel’s respite was short-lived, as she passed away suddenly a week after that tragic event, from causes as yet unknown but quite possibly related to her existing medical conditions (compounded by the stress of her terrifying experience):
Suchomel, 28, who was not injured during [the] shooting, died early [October 9] at her Apple Valley home, according to her grandmother, Julie Norton, the co-founder of the High Desert Phoenix Foundation.

Norton found Suchomel just after 8:30 a.m. when she arrived to care for her 3-year-old great-granddaughter, Scarlett. She believes Suchomel may have died in her sleep after her husband, Mike, left for work at 4:30 a.m.

“Kymberley had epilepsy and she’s always been prone to seizures — she told her friend that she recently had three focal seizures,” Norton told the Daily Press. “I believe the stress from the shooting took her life.”

Suchomel, who was taking medication for a pituitary tumor, shared her fear of trying to fall sleep at night as the “sounds of gunfire” become louder in her head and the images of “broken and bloody bodies” flashed through her mind.

Ms. Suchomel’s sudden passing drew a good deal of online attention because a Facebook post attributed to her, made a few days after the shooting (from an account that has since been set private), included a harrowing account of the shooting that referenced the presence of multiple gunmen:

We were rounding some sort of corner maybe and I looked to the right and I saw this large cowboy sitting down with his legs spread, holding a blood-soaked woman. I thought to myself “we NEED to hide”, but as I looked quickly for somewhere to go, the gunfire once again got closer and closer. We couldn’t hide because they (and I do mean THEY) were chasing us. That exact moment is when I started to really panic. That is the exact moment in which I thought this was it, I was going to die, I was never going to see my family again. So, as we are running, we approach this fence where men are throwing women over, and we ran up to it as they had knocked It down, so we were able to get out. As we crossed the threshold of the venue, my mind went straight to other mass shootings and hearing the victim’s families in my head talk about how they never got to say goodbye. I did not want this for my husband (who was at work) & my grandma (who had my daughter, Scarlett). So, at 10:07pm I called my husband franticly leaving him a voicemail telling him that I loved him and was in the middle of a shooting & I wasn’t sure if I would make it out alive. Next, while still running, I called my grandma to tell her the exact same thing. But the gunfire wasn’t stopping this whole time. It wasn’t ceasing. It wasn’t slowing down. And It was directly behind us, following us. Bullets were coming from every direction. Behind us, in front of us, to the side of us. But I know, I just know, that there was someone chasing us. The entire time I felt this way. The farther we got from the venue, the closer the gunfire got. I kept looking back expecting to see the gunmen and I say MEN because there was more than one person. There was more than one gun firing. 100% more than one. As we were running, we kept changing direction, because it felt like no matter what direction we took, we were being followed.

I have bene watching the news non-stop since I arrived back home to my family. And it just doesn’t make sense. The story that are feeding everyone doesn’t add up to our eyewitness accounts. There is something wrong with what they are saying & the evidence seems fake if you ask me. There are multiple people stating that there was a lady towards the beginning of the evening who had made her way up to the stage warning people that we were all gunna die her and her boyfriend were escorted off the premises. Why has she not been mentioned by authorities? Every single survivor I have talked to also remembers multiple shooters, and at least one from the ground why aren’t we being taken more seriously? Tons of things don’t add up.

We can’t speak to Ms. Suchomel’s experience (nor inquire with her about it), but her reference to a woman’s supposedly issuing an ominous warning well before the shooting began appears to have been an exaggerated account stemming from an unrelated altercation. And although conspiracy theories about a “second gunman” began circulating shortly after the shooting, no credible information has turned up in the investigation so far suggesting that more than one person fired upon the concert crowd that evening.

Kymberley’s untimely death has been compared in many online accounts to that of John Beilman, a New York resident who killed himself and his daughter in a 3 October 2017 murder-suicide — reportedly just one day after FBI agents had searched his home. A much-replicated conspiracy tale maintained Beilman was being investigated in connection with the Las Vegas mass shooting, but that account was a fabrication which originated with a well known fake news site.


Here is the full text of Kymberley Suchomel’s Facebook post describing the indescribable horror of the Las Vegas Massacre:

I have been receiving phone calls, messages & texts galore since Sunday night, and I have been providing the same copy & pasted message to each of those who have contacted me. A really quick, vague, account of what happened at the Route 91 Festival in Las Vegas. It has been nearly 72 hours since the nightmare took place, and I am finally able to sit here & put into words my own personal account. I have attached some photos of the fun we did have.

I would first like to give a huge giant thank you to both Casie Barnard & Ricky Ardito, without them I can guarantee you I wouldn’t have gotten out like I did- I would have dropped to the floor, stunned, and I would not have been able to get up. I owe them both my life.

Sunday morning we woke up sore & hungover from the nights before. Friday & Saturday nights were a blast- we drank too much, and fought the crowd to get as close to the stage as possible. We acted like we were in our early 20s and hitting Vegas for the first time; however, when we woke up Sunday we all were in complete agreeance that we would not be doing that again. We decided, instead, to bring in a king sized sheet & sit on the astro-turf in the way, way back & just peacefully watch the concert from our spacious sheet. We also decided to drink the morning and afternoon of, but not the evening, as Ricky, Cassie & Mendy had an early day ahead of them, having to leave at 4am to get Ricky to work Monday morning. When we had full bellies & got our retail fix in-shopping the vendors, we headed to the main stage where we immediately sought out that back sitting area. Unfortunately, we procrastinated getting to our seats for too long, and every spot was taken. We ultimately ended up on the next fake-grass area much closer to the stage- but we still had a decent amount of space & great viewing area, so we spread out our sheet and claimed it our territory. We remember exactly where we were, because most of us (excluding myself) left to go to the bathroom & get water during the concert, so we used landmarks to be able to find each other again. I remember distinctly that one of the bars was to my left and I had to look behind me to see it- thinking maybe I should get one more beer, but I already had a full bladder & I have an irrational fear of porta-potties, so I decided against it.

We are all hanging out on this sheet, dancing our booties off, enjoying ourselves so much that we took off our boots to get even more comfortable. Casie & I were on opposite sides of our little 5-person group. I was on the far right side, and I had so much room to dance that this guy who walked by, who we called “camo man”, actually said to me “taking up a lot of real estate there, eh?” jokingly. After about 20 minutes of Jason Aldean’s set, I got this overwhelming feeling to go stand over by Casie. I can’t tell you why, but I did. The entire time I was dancing next to her I kept thinking to myself, “why? Why don’t I go back to my spacious area?? There is no room to dance over here.. I am not having a good time over here… okay, on the next song I will”. But, there wasn’t a next song.

From about 50 feet in front of us, and a little to the right, fire crackers were set off. Let me repeat that… FIRE CRACKERS WERE SET OFF. I verbally stated “some asshole just shot of fire crackers in close proximity to so many people”. I was literally pissed off. You could see Jason Aldean look to his left kind of startled by it, but he was also clearly irritated. I would say about 15 seconds later, the first volley of gunfire was released. It was a shorter volley than any of the others, and the gunfire was not as close together either. EVERYONE looked up, down, around. We thought it was more fire crackers at first, but then Ricky reached over, told us all to put our boots on, quickly. And the volley ended. Then people started to panic. The gentlemen behind me looked at me as I was putting on my boots, half laying down, and said “calm down crazy, its just fireworks, jeez”. That is when the 2nd volley went off, Ricky yelled at us all to get down, flat, & we immediately knew there was someone shooting at us.

I remember getting down, but I didn’t lay flat for some reason, thinking- oh my gosh, I need to get flatter than I am now, but my body just wouldn’t let me. That was the 2nd volley. At the end of that volley ( I am still struggling to get my boots on), we turned and tried to run, but the people behind us still weren’t moving. I yelled at the lady “RUN! ITS GUNFIRE! RUUUUUUUUUNNNN!!!”

The look on her face was pure terror, but she finally dropped her stuff and turned to begin running…. But then the 3rd volley hit… and it was close. Very, very close to us. I could physically see the impact of the bullets on the astro-turf, I could feel the warmth & the passing of bullets. Once that 3rd volley was over, Casie linked her arm into mine, and we decided at that moment we weren’t stopping- we were getting the Hell out of there. And I do mean Hell. We were in literal Hell. The gentlemen that mocked me stating it was just fireworks fell to the ground, and he never got back up. The lady behind me (who was now in front of me) who was terrified as I told her to run, never got back up. I actually had to physically step over her body to run (something I am still struggling with, so please don’t attack me. I was absolutely in flight-or-fight mode). There was another person to my right who also wasn’t moving. We ran. I don’t know what direction we ran, I don’t know towards which landmark we ran. We just ran. It was at this time our group got split up. Casie & I were together. Ricky, Cassie & Mendy were together.

We were rounding some sort of corner maybe- and I looked to the right and I saw this large cowboy sitting down with his legs spread, holding a blood-soaked woman. I thought to myself “we NEED to hide”, but as I looked quickly for somewhere to go, the gunfire once again got closer and closer. We couldn’t hide because they (and I do mean THEY) were chasing us. That exact moment is when I started to really panic. That is the exact moment in which I thought this was it, I was going to die, I was never going to see my family again. So, as we are running, we approach this fence where men are throwing women over, and we ran up to it as they had knocked It down, so we were able to get out. As we crossed the threshold of the venue, my mind went straight to other mass shootings and hearing the victim’s families in my head talk about how they never got to say goodbye. I did not want this for my husband (who was at work) & my grandma (who had my daughter, Scarlett). So, at 10:07pm I called my husband franticly leaving him a voicemail- telling him that I loved him and was in the middle of a shooting & I wasn’t sure if I would make it out alive. Next, while still running, I called my grandma to tell her the exact same thing.

But the gunfire wasn’t stopping this whole time. It wasn’t ceasing. It wasn’t slowing down. And It was directly behind us, following us. Bullets were coming from every direction. Behind us, in front of us, to the side of us. But I know, I just know, that there was someone chasing us. The entire time I felt this way. The farther we got from the venue, the closer the gunfire got. I kept looking back expecting to see the gunmen- and I say MEN because there was more than one person. There was more than one gun firing. 100% more than one.

As we were running, we kept changing direction, because it felt like no matter what direction we took, we were being followed. So we ended up running in a weird triangular path. The first place I remember getting to was a parking lot, and I told Casie (who was slightly in front of me) we needed to get under one of the trucks. She turned to me and started her way back to me, and that is when the gunfire got even CLOSER than ever before. It was RIGHT THERE. It was within the parking lot. Everyone around us was panicking once again. So we ditched the idea of getting underneath a vehicle, and we continued the run for our lives. If you know me, you know I am a big girl, who is out of shape, and who definitely does not run for any reason. But I can tell you I ran like I have never run before.

The 2nd place I remember going by was Hooters- which is where we met back up with the rest of our small group. We ran towards the entrance thinking we could take cover there, but as we got closer, a stampede of people ran out, terrified. We could only conclude that there was another gunman inside of that hotel. This made us even more scared- we had nowhere to go- no one to trust. At some point, we ended up at the airport & even entered the building for safety. Everyone as we entered were screaming at the staff “IS IT SAFE IN HERE?” but we weren’t getting anyone to answer us, so after running about 30 feet into the building, not getting the answers we so desperately needed, we decided it, too, wasn’t a safe spot, so we got out of there quickly and continued running.

After all this running, we were tired, sore & having to stop to cough, gag and even vomit. We ran across an intersection & us & another group of people pleaded with a limo driver to let us in and get us out of there. He was clearly confused & didn’t understand what was going on, so he didn’t let us in. Next, we ran to a taxi van & she was willing to let us in, but she told us her van only held 4 people & she wasn’t going to let the 5 of us in, so we said screw it and continued running. At one point, we ran passed a small liquor store where they so graciously gave us water bottles. We passed UNLV as well.

Some things I can’t remember exactly where we were or at what time of the night they happened. But we were running along what I am guessing was Tropicana Avenue, and this dark colored sedan drives by, slows a little, and a smaller Hispanic, dark-haired woman leans out the window, and she yells something we couldn’t understand in a clearly taunting manner. It really freaked us out, because again, we didn’t know who we could and could not trust.

I don’t remember at which time, but at some point, Ricky was reminded by Cassie that his Uncle Manny lived in Vegas. He called him, and we made a plan to meet him at a grocery store a couple miles away to get picked up. We finally made it to him, he shoved us all in his car, drove us to our hotel (we stayed off the strip), waited for us to pack (this literally took us all of 10 minutes max to do), and escorted us to the freeway to get us home. A HUGE thank you to Uncle Manny for his love, generosity & kindness.

The what-ifs still kill me. What if we hadn’t decided to be chill that night? What if we went to the same sardine-like spot we were in the two previous nights? What if we had been drinking as much as we had been Saturday night? Would we have had the reaction time to escape? What if I hadn’t had the desire to move next to Casie? Would we have been separated? There are still so many what-ifs from that night.

I have bene watching the news non-stop since I arrived back home to my family. And it just doesn’t make sense. The story that are feeding everyone doesn’t add up to our eyewitness accounts. There is something wrong with what they are saying & the evidence seems fake if you ask me. There are multiple people stating that there was a lady towards the beginning of the evening who had made her way up to the stage warning people that we were all gunna die- her and her boyfriend were escorted off the premises. Why has she not been mentioned by authorities? Every single survivor I have talked to also remembers multiple shooters, and at least one from the ground- why aren’t we being taken more seriously? Tons of things don’t add up.

I know I am forgetting a bunch of what happened, and I will edit this post to include it as I remember.

I praise our Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ, for surviving a horrific incident. People were dropping like flies all around me, and there is absolutely ZERO reason why I wasn’t at least struck with a bullet. I left the Route 91 Festival completely unharmed physically, besides some scrapes and super sore bones & muscles. Mentally, however, is a different story. I do okay during the day, but as soon as nightfall hits, I get super scared & anxious. I am even typing this up with butterflies in my stomach and a racing heart. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to go anywhere, ever. I can no longer be in any place with large crowds- concerts, festivals, theme parks, zoos, etc. I can no longer trust anyone around me. I can no longer close my eyes without seeing those bodies & hearing the sound of gunfire. I am ruined, as are thousands upon thousands of people.

We were given wristbands to wear for the 3-day event. I can’t seem to take mine off.

We went to Las Vegas for a super fun, down to Earth country concert featuring our favorite artists. We left scared, scarred, traumatized and broken. And for that, we demand answers.

Here is her followup post on Facebook:

“It’s been 5 days. And it’s not getting any easier. Although I’m not sure it can really be expected to get any easier.

Tonight is the first night since it happened that my husband has had to go to work. He works nights & I started really freaking out when I realized that soon I’d be alone at night. My grandmother, who had a previously scheduled trip to Washington, graciously agreed to cancel her trip so she could stay the weekend with me. It’s like I’m in elementary school again, and I need a babysitter. I hate this feeling. I hate it so much. But I hate the idea of being alone even more. “Alone”. That single word makes my heart race. Makes my stomach twist. How can a single word affect me so badly?

Dying the day, I can confidently say I’m alright. As alright as I can be I guess. But as soon as nightfall hits, it’s a completely different story. When the sun is out, I can see my driveway, across the street, in my backyard, everywhere. But once the sun is gone- I’m blind. I have no idea who could be hiding in my bushes. I have no idea if someone is crouching behind my car. I’m completely blind. The world outside is totally unknown. Every single noise I hear makes me jump in fear that something is about to happen. I constantly have this uneasy, butterfly feeling in my stomach. Nightfall rears its ugly head, and I’m a mess. A broken mess. As I finally turn the tv off and attempt to go to sleep, the noises I hear get louder and seemingly more frequent. I’m finding myself breathing heavy and looking around as if I’m going to need to take cover at a moment’s notice. As I lay there, I keep reliving the night over and over on repeat. However, when I do get to sleep, I’m able to sleep for a Solid 4-5 hours (usually) before I’m woken up by loud bangs and booms. I know these sounds are in my mind, but I don’t know if they will ever stop or if I’ll ever be able to wake to them and immediately not freak out.

I’m also able to eat once again. Well, kind of. My appetite is huge. I make so much food when I eat. But, as the saying goes, my eyes are bigger than my stomach. It’s almost as if I’m trying to eat to erase the constant whirlwind I feel in my stomach. No matter what I eat… veggies, meats, junk food, etc… I get sick. Each and every time. My stomach is basically attacking back when I put food into it. I get so mad when this happens, but then I get angry at myself… I mean, at least I get to be sick. When 58 (and maybe even more) people will never even have the chance to be sick again.

The most ridiculous things terrify me. At 8:30pm every night, I have an alarm that goes off to remind me to take my prescription for a pituitary tumor I have. It’s gone off every night since May. But for the last five days, when it goes off, my heart races faster than ever before. I get sweaty. I get scared. I know it’s going to go off, but I still react this way. When will it stop?! When my daughter moves too quickly, tosses one of her toys, or talks too loudly after being quiet- I get the same fast beating heart and fear. Just a few minutes ago, as I lay next to her watching her cartoons, she rolls over to give me a hug. My instant reaction was to get closer to the ground and I actually yelled at her for moving so quickly. I yelled at my three year old daughter for hugging me. What kind of mother am I to do such a mean thing to my daughter? I’m a broken mother.

When multiple people talk at the same time (ie: my daughter and my grandma), I get super anxious. I feel as though I’m drowning in their voices, and I wouldn’t be able to hear if someone is coming. And I get mean about it. Not intentionally, but I get mean.

Against everyone’s advice, all I want to do is watch the news. I want to see what they are reporting. If anyone else has passed. If people are being reunited. I want to see if they are finally taking some steps in a different direction than the supposed “one” shooter. But, on every news station I watch, they are taking about the weather, car accidents, bills going into the senate, etc. It makes me so angry. It’s an irrational anger, but I’m angry that they would have the audacity to report on anything else besides the tragedy that happened on Oct 1st. Because gimme, absolutely nothing is more important. Again, I know this is irrational, but it still pisses me off to no end.

I tried to keep myself busy this morning. Started some laundry, did some work. Then, I picked up the dress I wore Sunday night. I was about to toss it in the washer, but had this overwhelming feeling not to. Instead, I held it, inspecting it not sure of what I was going to find, or even what I was looking for. Thankfully it’s a black dress, so all I really saw was a bunch of dirt. But in two spots towards the bottom, it’s a little “crusted”. You know that feeling- when you spill a thicker liquid (like ice cream) and don’t wash it immediately? That’s what it feels like. I shutter to think of what it might be. That dress never went into the wash. It’s still sitting, now nicely folded, on my dryer. As if washing it would wash out my connection to that night. In all actuality, that is what part of me wants. Part of me wants the memories gone. The experiences gone. But the other half knows that what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger in one way or another. Maybe that’s why I’m still finding myself wearing my festival wristband and never wanting to take it off.

I don’t cry as much anymore. However, some stories I read, videos I watch, and anytime I hear Jason Aldean sing, I can’t help but start crying. What makes me really break down, is my daughter. If you read my previous post, you know that I called both my husband (who I left a voicemail for) & my grandma (who was babysitting my daughter) a few minutes after the gunfire began. My grandma answered and my daughter was still awake. I’m not positive on what was happening on that other end of the call, but when I got home my baby was asleep. When she woke up, she immediately looked for me & the words she said to me were “mommy! You run from the bad guys. You okay now?” And if that doesn’t just break your heart… it’s not the only time she’s said it. She says it every day. Multiple times a day. And it crushes me. After I picked her up from school today, and got her home, was the worst. My three year old daughter, Scarlett, who was in my arms, looked directly into my eyes and said… “I’m happy you’re here mommy. Those bad guys stopped chasing you.” What do you even say to that? How do you react? I hugged her tight, tears streaming down my face, and I told her I was Safe and those bad guys are gone.

I don’t really know why I’m writing this down, I literally never post on Facebook. But for some strange reason, I have an overwhelming feeling to do so. I just wish I was writing down my feelings of how much fun I had, rather than the hole this experience has left in me & the fear I’ll no doubt live with for the rest of my life.”

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