JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
After the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl earlier this year, there was a celebratory parade. It ended with a mass shooting. One person died, and another 24 were injured. Events like that can crush a survivor's sense of safety. Even if physical wounds can heal, memories of the violence can fester. All of it changes the way a person sees the world. Bram Sable-Smith of KFF Health News reports.
BRAM SABLE-SMITH: There were actually two shootings at the parade. At the first, a bullet pierced the back of 20-year-old Jenipher Cabrera's right thigh.
JENIPHER CABRERA: And I grabbed my mom by her shoulder. I didn't say anything to her, and I just, like, looked at her. And I had - like, I had - my eyes were widened, and I kind of signaled with my eyes to look down at my leg. And we both looked down at the same time.
SABLE-SMITH: There was a hole in her leg, blood. She fell to the ground. Other fans came quickly to her aid, called an ambulance. Soon she was on it getting treated when she heard reports blasting from a police radio.
CABRERA: My mom was trying to get on the ambulance. I remember them saying, like, you can't get on. There might be other victims that we need to pick up, and I think that's when the other shooting had happened.
SABLE-SMITH: She's talking about a separate shooting that took place 24 minutes later, where many more shots were fired just four blocks away. Survivors from that shooting ended up getting treated at the same hospital, the same ER as Cabrera. Unreal, she thought. But after the initial treatment comes the healing, and that is different for everyone because it's not just about the violence they incurred, it's about the threat of future violence. Dr. LJ Punch is founder of the Bullet Related Injury Clinic in St. Louis.
LJ PUNCH: People desperately want to be safe.
SABLE-SMITH: That search for safety is personal, deeply so. And it can be challenging when reminders of gun violence are everywhere. There have been 133 homicides in Kansas City this year. That's not counting the parade. Another 527 people were shot and survived. Some of the parade shooting survivors endure panic attacks. Many, like James Lemons, who was shot in the leg, now see crowds with a heightened sense of danger.
JAMES LEMONS: I look at them as a stranger differently than what I used to look at them like. I used to look at them like, oh, I can approach them. Oh, that's OK. You know what I'm saying? To where - do they have a gun? Like, is my kid OK being around that person? Do I need to be around them the whole time?
SABLE-SMITH: Jenipher Cabrera says she's often felt isolated. Early on, she tried therapy.
CABRERA: I felt like my brain was a box with folders, and that folder was all the way in the back. And I wanted to talk about other stuff instead of that because I felt like I wasn't ready to, like, process that yet.
SABLE-SMITH: Cabrera thinks she's ready now to try and make sense of what happened to her, and yet the memory of the parade, that unusually warm Valentine's Day, is still fresh, always present.
CABRERA: And it runs over and over and over and over in my mind.
SABLE-SMITH: There's been a lot of stress in her life since she was shot. It can't help but feel connected like a chain. That's why she started helping a local lawmaker work on antiviolence initiatives. Jenipher Cabrera just wants something positive to happen, something good to come from being shot. I'm Bram Sable-Smith.
SUMMERS: Bram is with our partner, KFF Health News, and KCUR's Peggy Lowe contributed reporting for this story.
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