LITTLETON, Colo. — April Fehrman thought that birthday was going to be the best one she ever had. In 2017, she and her cousin got tickets to the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas.
"It was such an amazing time; we had so much fun," she recalled of the music festival she attended 3 1/2 years ago.
On Wednesday, she scrolled through her phone filled with photos of her time on the Vegas strip. She swiped through colorful pictures of a stage filled with country acts she was able to see that weekend.
It was the time of her life. Until it wasn't.
"Sunday came around and my cousin had already seen Jason Aldean so we decided to skip that performance and walk around the hotels instead and because of that we missed the shooting," she said.
On Oct. 1, 2017 a gunman opened fire upon a crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival. Sixty people were killed and hundreds of others were injured.
Fehrman spoke to 9NEWS following the tragic mass shooting at a Boulder King Soopers last Monday that left 10 people dead.
Fehrman said she didn't hear the gunfire at the concert she decided to pass on. Instead, she has a photo from her sightseeing venture she and her cousin decided to take that night. In the corner of one of the photos is an ambulance arriving on-scene.
"The thought that kept crossing my mind is if my cousin hadn’t seen his performance elsewhere we would have been there, and who knows what could have happened?" she said. "It was the struggle of not technically being a survivor because I wasn't running from gunshots, I wasn't seeing dead bodies or anything, but people were telling me that my feelings were that of survivor's guilt."
Those are emotions that will likely resonate for many in Boulder in the coming days as they try to process what they've lost.
"They feel bad about the fact they have been able to survive a situation which others haven't," Dr. Sammie Moss, a psychiatrist with Kaiser Permanente, said. "There’s certainly the idea that they wish they hadn’t, maybe they could have done something different to change the situation."
Moss stressed there is really only one solution when dealing with this type of guilt, to face it.
"Talking about what has happened is so very important for us to begin the process of what we're going through and to begin the process of healing," he said. "Knowing that you’re not alone, knowing that there are a lot of people that are suffering and there are people that are there to help."
Kaiser has created a free website that helps people talk about trauma. The site includes prompts for those struggling with starting the conversation.
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