Route 91

On the eve of Kelli’s 25th birthday in 2017, she and her boyfriend find themselves running for their lives in a dystopian nightmare.

They’d planned to spend the weekend in Las Vegas at the Route 91 country music festival to celebrate the dawn of a new phase of Kelli’s life. Instead, they witnessed the deadliest mass shooting (so far) in U.S. history.

This episode is a story about terror … and what happens after you’ve survived the unsurvivable.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

A quick warning that this episode contains scenes of violence, plus tape of gunshots.

NARRATION
I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Terrible, Thanks for Asking.

I am the holder of a lot of unpopular opinions. Things I *don’t* like that millions of other people *do* like include:

Football. The sport.
The TV show The Big Bang Theory. Like, why??
Guns

That last one is a big one. I just, truly, I don’t get it.

And it may be a stance that is more divisive than the big bang theory, because people REALLY LOVE GUNS or they REALLY HATE GUNS. I will admit to not knowing a lot about guns other than that they are a tool that is used to kill things. They are also a thing that some people use for sports, or just because they’re interested in guns? Regardless, like the big bang theory and football in general…I don’t get it.

Guns are kinda a hot topic around the USA right now, because we have this thing that keeps happening where people take guns and then use them to kill other people. We call them Mass Shootings. The FBI defines it as a single incident where more than 4 people are shot or killed, besides the shooter. and there have been so many that we just sort of tune them out in a way. The mass shooting news cycle goes kinda like this:

Step 1: Mass shooting
Step 2: We all yell about guns on the Internet
Step 3: Politicians and experts get on TV and talk about their thoughts and prayers. are like blahblahblahblahblah
Step 4: Something else happens

But a few weeks ago there was a shooting at a school in florida and…it’s not going away! And that’s good!

Emma Gonzalez: When we have had our say with the government and maybe the adults have gotten used to saying “it is what it is” but if… us students have learned anything it’s that if you don’t study you will fail and in this case if you actively do nothing people continually end up dead. So it’s time to start doing something [cheers]

NARRATION
Teenagers like Emma Gonzalez are standing up to say that they’ve had enough. Because… since (WHATEVER YEAR) there have been (SO MANY) shootings. That have impacted so many people. There are so many stories.

This is one story. About one couple. In one mass shooting.

[MUSIC]

It’s Thursday, September 28, 2017… and Kelli was driving to Las Vegas with her boyfriend Steele.

Kelli: We were probably listening to country music because we were getting ready for the festival.

NARRATION
The Festival is the Route 91 Country Music Festival. Kelly and Steele are on their way from just outside Los Angeles, where they live… to the Mandalay Bay Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Kelli: We were probably listening to… each of the people who are gonna perform because… my boyfriend is very very into country music. and I am a country music newbie. So… we’re kind of just listening to music and we’re a good road trippers together I would say.

NARRATION
Kelli and Steele were college sweethearts and… they had been dating about three years at this point and… they were really excited for the Route 91 festival, this is… one of two major country music festivals for country fans on the west coast. So it’s an event.

Kelli: I didn’t know what to expect. To be honest. We always go to concerts. That was something we did all the time. So I was really excited for the concert. And… I was excited because it was my birthday on… the following Monday.

NARRATION
It was a big birthday, too. Kelli was turning 25.

Kelli: It was a big deal. I wasn’t very excited to turn 25

Nora: Right! Oh shi–it feels like now I cannot deny that I’m an adult.

Kelli: Yeah turning 25 I was like Oh. Man I need to figure my whole life out.

NARRATION
24 had been a good year for Kelli… she and Steele had traveled to Europe together. They had moved in together. They had bought a vacuum together. And now… they were going to a country music festival to celebrate her birthday.

Kelli: it was exciting just to… know what was ahead. And to know that we’re going to be in Vegas which… I was excited to dance and sing and drink and all of that.

NARRATION
Kelli and Steele arrive at their friends apartment. Sean and Tina live about 15 minutes from the Strip, so everyone cashes in for the night because tomorrow, the party begins!

[MUSIC]

NARRATION
That first day… Friday… they got there early. And by early I mean noon. They ARE 24.

Kelli: Actually like one of the first things we noticed was like the security was… not that great. Like I just walked in and… I’m going to tell you this but we had like alcohol in my boots and… I don’t know. Security is just like really lax and that was something we noticed like the first day.

NARRATION
Route 91 is a big outdoor festival held just across the street from two big casinos with hotels that look down over the area. 22,000 people were there to watch three days of music.

There was a big main stage. There were shops with big belt buckles and big cowboy hats.

And Kelli and Steele were ready. She’d carefully picked out her outfits for the weekend. This sounds a little superficial, but these are the things she thought would be memorable about the weekend.

Day 1:
Kelli: I was wearing… my cowboy boots. These brown cowboy boots and some light blue denim cutoffs shorts and a like…. colored tank top shirt that I had tied.

NARRATION
Day 2:

Kelli: I’m wearing an off the shoulder red flowery dress with. Actually I was wearing some high heeled booties with it.

NARRATION
Day 3. Sunday, October 1st:

Kelli: I’m wearing black cutoff shorts. I’m wearing my… cowboy boots again. and I’m wearing a black tank top with a plaid flannel tied around my waist.

NARRATION
For their last day Steele wore: jeans and a tee shirt. Oh, and running shoes. Very fancy.

[MUSIC OUT]

For the final day of the festival, the friends found a spot near the stage, only about 25 feet from the front. Kelli takes out her phone, and records a short video to show off where they are.

[VIDEO STARTS]

It shows the Mandalay Bay hotel rising high above the right side of the stage area… facing the crowd. People are packed in around Kelli. Kelli spins around, and at the end, Steele pops into view.

[VIDEO CUTS OUT]

It’s just a…not special shot from a cell phone.

Kelli: I’m really happy I’m so like having a good time and we’re singing and Steele like knows all the words to every song. So he’s having a good time.

NARRATION
At around 9:40 pm, the headliner took the stage. Jason Aldean.

Kelli: He’s the one that everyone is… really excited to see.

Nora: And you guys are close to the stage. So is it like super loud for you? Are you singing?

Kelli: Yes. I’m singing. It is very loud. Thank God because I can’t hear myself sing then. But yeah it was it was pretty loud.

Nora: And… so then what did you hear?

Kelli: So he was probably three songs in and… and… I heard this… like popping… Almost. it sounds like a… almost like a firecracker going off. It was kind of like a loud pitch sharp. like pop. And I heard that like five times probably.. it went like pop pop pop. And my heart dropped immediately. Like from the first sound I heard I… 100 percent knew what it was. And… everyone stopped. And… this guy next to me… turned to me and he looked at me and he was like “it’s not what you think it is.” And I just kind of looked at him like… I think it’s exactly what I think it is. But in that moment you don’t want to overreact if it’s not. but… in my heart I knew what it was. And he looked at me and he was just like…We’re fine. It’s just like firecrackers… And I was like… I don’t think so and I looked at Steele and we both just looked at each other. like we didn’t move like we just looked to each other and just kind of stopped.

NARRATION
Twitter user Luke Broadlick was there… filming on his phone at the time. And it becomes obvious — it’s clearly NOT FIREWORKS. It was gunfire. A lot of gunfire. And heads up — it’s pretty horrifying. FF (# of seconds if you don’t wanna hear it).

[VIDEO]

Kelli: It was like… it was like a warning almost. like it was a couple and then… stopped for like 10 seconds and then… and then it just went. and… it was just like a constant. And… we all ducked.

NARRATION
Kelli dropped to the ground. Steele hovered over her, protecting her. The people behind them started running towards the back of the venue. The gunshots paused again for a second, then restarted.

Kelli: So we’re all just like… packed in this area in the front right area of the stage. and… I had seen a woman next to me… I think she got shot in the arm or something and she… fell to the ground. And… I didn’t even know what to think. like I… I didn’t even know what to do. I just like looked down at her and she was screaming… and I couldn’t see where she got hit. She was just like yelling and someone was helping her. And then it just like started again. and in my head I’m thinking like… This is real. This is actually happening. And it’s just like… the repetition of it and how loud it was… was… like I’ll never forget that sound ever in my life. And… then… it paused and Steele was like “Kelli get up. Kelli get up” and… someone was like laying on my leg. And so I couldn’t really get up and… this woman almost like “Honey, you need to get up or you’re going to get trampled” And Steele was like “Kelli Get up. Get up.” And so he was like pulling me. And we just started like sprinting.

NARRATION
We are going to take a break here. Be right back.

[[[[MIDROLL]]]]

NARRATION
And we’re back. Kelli and Steele were running away from a storm of bullets. They have no idea where their friends Sean and Tina have gone, but they don’t have time to think about it.

In the middle of the venue there was a bar area. Kelli and Steele ran towards it. They were trying to get behind something.

Kelli: Cuz you just felt like a sitting duck like… there was nothing to hide you. You’re just sitting there and you see people dropping around… and it’s random and… you can’t… tell where it’s coming from because you look around there’s someone on the ground over here you turn around there’s someone on the ground over there and like… you could tell that… the noise was coming from the right. So I thought they were in the right front corner. I thought someone was walking through the venue shooting people at random. Because… that’s when I was like Well… security was really lax like… someone totally could have brought a gun in.

NARRATION
Kelli and Steele made it to the bar area. People had pushed over tables to use them as shields. Because it is in the middle of a field, the bar had a generator that powered it. There were walls that surrounded that generator. Kelli and Steele run into that 10 foot by 10 foot area between the walls and the generator.

Kelli: And there was… not a lot of space around it. We ran in there and there is probably 10 people like hiding in this area. and… I think I was like on top of someone’s legs. There’s a couple to the left of me. And that was… pretty much when like… I thought I was going to die. Like… I kind of came to the realization that there was no way that we were going to get out of this situation. and we’re sitting there and I’m crunched like almost in child’s pose like… holding my… like holding my head and… like on top of these other people and Steele’s like… just Steele’s shielding me and He’s… he’s like on top of my back. And so the whole time I’m just thinking like… he’s exposed and… like he was ready to die for me. [crying] I still thought we both were going to die.

We were probably in there for… a minute or two in this like hiding. and… the bullets… you could hear them hit the side of the wall or whatever steel plate or something that was around this generator. You could hear it like smacking against it and it got so loud. It was so loud and… in my head. I’m hiding there and… I think that the guy is around the corner. like I’m picturing the shooter just on the side… on the other side of this wall that’s separating us. I remember I gave this like… like blood curdling scream. and I don’t– like I had no control over it I just like started screaming… like into my legs cuz I’m just like huddled down there and I’m just… screaming. There was… a husband and a wife against the wall. And I remember like when I screamed. she looked at her husband and she was like… “I’m really scared. I’m really scared. Like I think we’re going to die.”

It was like either we’re going to sit here and we’re probably going to die. or we could move. We still might die. It was like… like either do something… and hopefully live or sit here and… for sure die. And Steele is still on top of me and then it pauses for a second and… I look up at him and I’m like “we need to get out of here out of this spot.”

NARRATION
Kelli and Steele got up and started pushing through the people around them to get out. They moved outside of the enclosed generator space. Just like before, there are tables upended, and people hiding behind them like shields.

Kelli: There is this guy who was sitting there. and there is a pause in the bullets. and he was like “He’s reloading. You need to go now” and Steele was like “we gotta run. and… and we just started sprinting and this is the whole left side of the venue. So this whole open space that’s just… it was probably the scariest thing too because… we were running and… I’m like well if there’s someone walking around this is an easy target like… my boyfriend’s 6 5 I’m 5 11 like we’re…. big targets and we’re the only people running through this venue right now.

We just sprint. And he’s like a couple steps in front of me and we’re just sprinting across the venue. And… right as we started… he started shooting again. You can hear the bullets hit the ground as you’re running across. They would… like burst once they hit the ground and we’re running and Steele he like… kind of stops… and like I think he got shot in the leg and I’m like… freaking out. And he just keeps running. And I’m like “Are you OK?” and we’re just running and his knee is like bleeding and I’m thinking like “oh my god he just got shot in the leg but he’s moving. So we just got to keep moving.”

NARRATION
Kelli and Steele made it to another bar area on the edge of the venue. They hide behind more tables. They look at Steele’s leg and realize that he hadn’t been shot, but he did have fragments in his leg.

The fence near them was gone somehow. Beyond that is a road and open parking lots. They still didn’t know where the shooter is, but that felt like it was moving toward safety.

Kelli: As we’re running out. you could see people… like grabbing people who are wounded like putting them over their shoulders and running out. I saw this woman– and she was completely. I don’t even know if she was alive but this man was just like. she was just on his shoulder and he was just running with her. As we sprinted across the left side of the venue like… you could see people on the ground and like you just… you knew that they were dead.

NARRATION
Kelli and Steele ran down the road away from the gunfire. The road dead-ends into a cul-de-sac, and they hopped the fence at the end of it. They’re not on the strip anymore. They’re in a part of vegas that isn’t hotels and shiny buildings. It’s just… a few square industrial buildings. And open space. It’s just…where do you go?? You always have this feeling — in nightmares like this, or in REAL SITUATIONS LIKE this — like, if you only get out, if you only get to safety, you’ll be fine. But safety isn’t a destination.

Kelli: I saw someone open a door to one of the buildings and… I was like “Steele we need to go into that room.” And we turned and… they opened the door for us and we went into this… office building. There was like a little boardroom area. There’s probably 50 people And then they closed the door and they didn’t let anyone else in.

Kelli: we didn’t feel safe even in this moment because we had no clue what was going on. So… it’s like you feel a tad bit better because you’re in this building. But then… who knows like what if they set up bombs like… and I know that’s drastic but like in that moment you’re like well what if this is a full blown…

Nora: It doesn’t sound drastic. You were at a concert having like the time of your life and then. I would..

Kelli: Yeah.

Nora: At this point do you have any… like do you have your phones are? phones working?

Kelli: Steele and I walk straight to the very back. We actually go into the bathroom and the bathrooms. Like a two stall bathroom with like two sinks. There’s probably five people sitting in the bathroom right now. And we walk in and we sit down and we’re just sitting there and we’re both just… we just like calm our bodies a little bit because there’s so much adrenaline and… we’re just both telling each other we love each other and… then we… call our parents. and at this point… it’s not on the news or anything like that. So… my mom was like “Are you OK?” I was like “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. We’re safe like at this moment. But I have no clue what’s happening. I still don’t feel… like I still feel there’s a possibility I could die.”

NARRATION
One of the other people in the office space is an off duty officer with the Las Vegas Police. He was telling his sargent where they were. About a half hour passed. The cop in the room got word that the police had the building surrounded, and there was a bus to take everyone to a safe space away from the venue.

But when they get outside there were no cops. There was no bus. So, they start running again, East again… away from the shooting.

And… they hit the back of McCarran International Airport, which is only a few blocks from where they started.

Kelli: And it was kind of a dead end and we’re like “what are we going to do?”

NARRATION
Their car was still at the Mandalay Bay casino, in the direction of the shooting… so they… did what you do.

Kelli: I… called a Lyft.

NARRATION
A Lyft. She calls a ride share.

So little time has passed since the shooting started that this driver doesn’t even know what is happening. He just knows cops have blocked some of the streets. Which is… it turns out… what that cop in the building had meant when he said cops were surrounding the building. This driver, though, has hit a roadblock. The little dot on her phone has stalled.

Kelli: He calls me and on the phone I’m like “I can see where you are… don’t move.” Like… “we are coming. Please do not leave us we’re… two minutes away.” And he’s like “OK I’m going to stay on the line with you.” And I was like “ple– OK yes” like “we’re coming we’re coming.” And I saw him and he’s like “Kelly?” Like “yes.” And we get in the car and… [choking up]… the minute Steele and I got in the car we both broke down. Like… we… we knew we would be OK at that point. I felt way safer. Like I knew it wasn’t over but… in my head I was like “oh my god I can’t believe that someone just picked us up.” He starts driving is like “I could tell something was wrong by the sound of your voice… and I didn’t want to leave you.”

[MUSIC]

NARRATION
During the Lyft ride they get in touch with their friends Sean and Tina. They had gotten out of the venue right away and were at the apartment when Kelli and Steele arrived.

Kelli: we like composed ourselves and… We walk into the apartment and… Sean and Tina had… closed all of their blinds and they were just sitting there and… we like hugged them and were crying and were so happy that they were OK.

NARRATION
Kelli took out her phone. People had started texting. They had seen the video she’d taken earlier… showing the hotel, and the stage, and all those people…

Kelli: And like now I’m like “oh my god”… that is like such a crazy video now to think about because it was like…

[VIDEO START]

… that’s where he was coming from… this is the whole stage… this is the crowd we were in… this is where we were.

Nora: And like who in that video is still alive, you know?

Kelli: Yeah I. Yeah.

[VIDEO OUT]
[MUSIC]

NARRATION
They turned on the news and started to hear reports. It started out as two people dead. Then more. And more.

What we know now is that at 10:05 pm… as Jason Aldean was part way through the song “When She Says Baby”… a 64-year-old retired accountant named Stephen Paddock used a hammer to break out two windows in his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, across the street from the concert. Surrounding him were 23 rifles. Many of those were outfitted with high-capacity magazines and so-called “bump stocks”. Those are the things that make a semi-automatic rifle fire like a machine gun.

Over the next 10 minutes, Paddock fired more than 1,100 bullets into the tightly packed crowd of 22,000 people below. He didn’t need to aim carefully. Just pull the trigger. And when he ran out of bullets in one gun, instead of reloading, he would just pick up another one. Those were the pauses that Kelli and Steele kept experiencing.

When police finally made it into his hotel room, they found Paddock dead on the floor from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Before he died, Paddock killed 36 women and 22 men. Of those 58 people, 51 were killed by a single bullet, shot indiscriminately from above.

422 other people were hit by bullets but did not die. In total, an additional 851 people were injured during the attack.

Kelli: We didn’t get hurt. Like we had cuts and bruises and all of that but… we didn’t get shot. We didn’t die. We didn’t have any injuries and… there’s people around us who died. T hat was overwhelming. It’s like why them and not us. It’s hard to come to terms with it.

[MUSIC OUT]

NARRATION
The next day, Kelli and Steele found a way back to the strip to get their car. They started to drive. They headed away from the Mandalay Bay casino. Away from the Strip. Back to California.

Kelli: We were listening to country radio for a little and… they were talking about it and people were calling in and it was just way too much for us to handle so then we put on… some music and you’d be shocked how many songs talk about guns or shooting and… death and… I think we just sat in silence for a while. We were just holding hands the whole time and… we kept being like “we are so lucky to be alive and OK”

NARRATION
It was, if you remember, Kelli’s 25th birthday…

Kelli: We had planned for his whole family and my whole family to have dinner together on that Monday night. So they asked and I said like “I wanna do that still because… he– like we both felt like we just really wanted to be around our family. We walked in and…[choking up] it was really hard. And it’s hard for our families too because… they knew what happened but they didn’t understand exactly what happened and… no one can really know unless you were there.

NARRATION
Kelli’s nephews are at her birthday party. And… they’re little kids… they don’t know what has happened. And one of those nephews was… REALLY confused.

Kelli: He’s a 6 year old he just kept being like “why is everyone crying? What’s going on? What’s happening?”.

Nora: This is a weird dinner. This is a weird birthday party.

Kelli: Yeah He was like… “but Auntie it’s your birthday. Why are you guys crying?” And I think all we said was “oh we were just an accident like it’s fine.” And… I just grabbed them. And it’s… it was so nice to be around them because they’re just so innocent. They’re happy. They have no clue and . .. it was nice. .. to be around that.

[MUSIC CHANGE]

NARRATION
There are two sides to this trauma for Kelli. One is, I AM SO LUCKY TO BE ALIVE AND WOW LIFE IS A TREASURE. And the other is, OH MY GOD IS IT GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN???

Kelli: Before… Steele and I loved going out. We love going to see live music. We like going to bars. We like going out with friends… we go to dinners all the time together like we have little date night adventures all the time and… since the shooting… we’ve kind of taken a step back.

NARRATION
The things that bring them back to that fear and panic… over and over… those things can be found almost anywhere. Even the little things can be difficult.

Kelli: It’s hard because you go through the grocery store. I’m on edge the whole time I’m walking around people. Anyone who looks kind of weird… I’m thinking twice about them. I’m like… “do I want to be in this this area?” My heart’s beating really fast my hands are sweating. But… but no one knows that.

NARRATION
It started to feel claustrophobic to be anywhere, to not know EXACTLY how to get out of a crowded space.

Kelli: Even like a busy restaurant… I would get really really bad anxiety. And in my head… I would think “there’s a lot of people here. This is a target. If someone wanted to make a statement… they could make a statement here.”

NARRATION
Kelli and Steele went from super-social young people to…young people who are counting the nearby exits and plotting escape routes on dinner dates. And their friends and family are doing their best to remember that the injuries they carry from that night in Vegas aren’t physical.

Kelli: Even like our friends sometimes they forget because we look normal and in a conversation we’re normal. When we’re at their house we’re normal.

[MUSIC]

NARRATION
Normal women in their mid-20s do things like go to engagement parties. And go to bars. And Kelli tries her best to do that. So… A month after the shooting, she and Steele GO to an engagement party for one of their friends. The party started at a friend’s house, and then moved on to an after-party at a bar. Because they’re young people

Kelli: All of our friends were there and it was an amazing party and it was amazing time and then… they wanted to go out… and… the whole time we had known that this was going to happen. So Steele and I were kind of trying to talk ourselves into it. And we walk into the bar and . .. Steele looks at me and… [choking up] he was just like “I need to go. We need to go.” And we we walked out and… he started breaking down and… I started crying and we were just sitting on the outside of the bar like around the corner on the building. And we were just sitting there crying. And as much as we wanted to be OK and have this not affect us… it was like physically impossible. My friend called me was like “hey where are you guys?” And I was like “I can’t do it. I can’t go in there. I’m sorry like we’re leaving.” And she was like “it’s OK I understand like… I’m so sorry.” It’s no one’s fault it’s just…

Nora: It’s also hard not to feel like… like you’re disappointing people even though you’re not and your friends understand…

Kelli: Yeah.

Nora: You’re like well what about the day when they don’t understand or what about that and he doesn’t understand and…

Kelli: Yeah and it’s hard for… to admit that to ourselves I think too that… we’re not ready to do that yet.

Kelli: it’s like one day at a time and one week at a time and… one week I’ll be really okay and one week… I’m anxious to walk from my car to my house because I think… well this bad thing happened to me. So something else bad’s going to happen to me.

NARRATION
Some weeks are better than others. That’s true for Kelli… and for America. Some weeks ARE better than others. Because… frankly… We have a lot of mass shootings in America! We’ve had 115 SINCE THE ROUTE 91 SHOOTING IN OCTOBER. 115 incidents where 4 or more people were shot! There was one yesterday, apparently. By the time you hear this, there will have been more. You can check GunViolenceArchive.org if you want to keep up. They aren’t all headline news. But some have been.

[MUSIC]

October 18, 2017… in an Edgewood, Maryland business park… a man killed three people and wounded three others.

On November 1st, 2017 a man walked into a Walmart in suburban Denver… and killed three people.

On November 5th, 2017… Devin Patrick Kelley… a 26-year-old ex-US Air Force airman… walked into the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs Texas during Sunday morning services. Once inside… he killed 26 people and wounded 20 others.

Kelli: That really got to me because… for it to happen so close to one another. I think my head is like well this is going to be all the time and this could happen anywhere. And I don’t feel safe anywhere. My sense of safety is gone. I don’t feel safe anywhere.

NARRATION
On November 14, 2017… a man shot and killed his wife and then went on a 45-minute shooting spree in the Rancho Tehama Reserve in Northern California. Part of that spree
included an elementary school. 5 people died. 10 more were injured.

On January 28, 2018… a man wearing body armor started shooting at a car wash in rural Melcroft, Pennsylvania. Four people were killed, including the killer’s former girlfriend.

Kelli: When more… mass shootings keep happening… they just like reiterate my sense of safety that… I don’t have any.

NARRATION
There has been one week that has been especially hard for Kelli. As we mentioned before… on February 14… Valentine’s Day… a 19 year old walked into the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida and killed 17 people.

Kelli: I was actually having such a good week before that happened I was feeling very confident I was thinking that… I was… I had this moment where I was like “I think I can get through this. I’m getting better.” And then that happened and… [sigh]… I lost it. I… was trying to hold back tears like all day at work… it was hard for me to think about anything else for that week honestly. And still it’s hard for me not to think about it and… I think what’s different with this shooting too is that… you have videos of these kids hiding and scared and… I can’t watch them… because… it puts me right back into that place and I know exactly what they’re thinking and feeling and I know how they’re feeling and… I don’t want anyone to feel like that ever… and to know that this whole school felt like that is… it like breaks my heart. [crying] It’s just hard to know that… shootings are commonplace now… people just expect it.

[MUSIC OUT]

NARRATION
Experts have a name for this continued exposure to the thing that hurt you. They call it re-traumatizing. Sometimes, they call it re-victimizing. And…even though Kelli isn’t one of the 851 people who were physically injured that day, she’s still a victim. She is a victim of a mass shooting in America.

Kelli: It’s like they can’t feel what these people are feeling so they don’t see it as as bad… like those are the people who are like “well you’re okay”… I’m not okay… I’m not okay. I came out from this way better than a lot of people. I’m not okay. This can’t be something that Americans are just OK with and hoping that it won’t happen to them… but it happens to someone else well… there’s nothing we can do about.

NARRATION
I have never been in a mass shooting. Or any shooting. But I know what it’s like to go through something hard, and I know what it’s like to feel like nobody gets it, because it didn’t happen to them. There are plenty of tragedies in the world. Every single day, there is something awful happening. And if we truly let that all sink in, all the time, we wouldn’t even be able to get out of bed. Before my own husband had stage IV cancer, I was like, hm, cancer is sad I guess but there’s nothing I can do about it!

Kelli’s is one story. One story out of thousands and thousands. Kelli’s boyfriend has his own story — that he’s not ready to share — Kelli’s family, even though they weren’t there — have their own version of this story. The friends and family of the people who died that day have a story. Jason Aldean has a story! That lyft driver– he has a story.

Every time there is another shooting, there will be more stories. Tens of thousands more. From people who were doing ordinary things, having an ordinary day, who never thought that the statistics that we use to argue on the intenet… that politicians thoughts and prayers… that any of that would include them, or the people they love, or the people they were picking up in a lyft.

These people don’t get to move on to another headline, or another news cycle. Because it’s not just another story…it’s their story.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this has been Terrible, Thanks for Asking.