Mass shootings revive fear for Cincinnati survivor

CINCINNATI — Whitney Austin knew what a flurry of text messages asking how she was doing meant: a mass shooting.

Nearly one year ago, the 38-year-old survived 12 close-range gunshots in an attack in Cincinnati that left three people dead. Now, each time a similar attack takes place, the messages roll in. And as they arrive, she is forced to relive that day and all the fear that came with it.

When she saw messages this month while vacationing with her family in Florida, she quickly learned the basic details of a shooting in El Paso, Texas. Then she tried to go back to her vacation.

“It is so frustrating that that is what we have to do today. You have to call and check in to make sure that your loved ones have not been impacted by a mass shooting,” she said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

The next morning, she awoke to a fresh text onslaught. At first, she thought that they referred to El Paso, where 22 people died. But this time, the Whitney Austin was wounded in a deadly mass shooting at the Fifth Third Center in downtown Cincinnati nearly a year ago. In a video she made after this month’s shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, she said of those affected: “I know it makes you feel out of control. It makes me feel out of control.” messages were about Dayton, about 60 miles north of the Cincinnati office building where a gunman opened fire in September 2018 and where Austin begged a police officer to save her life.

“I know the city, and that makes it so much more real, combined with the fact that it was right on the heels of the one in El Paso,” Austin recounted in an interview. She said friends went to college in Dayton, and friends live there. “I just felt defeated. I started crying in bed.”

The Dayton gunman killed nine people, including his sister, before police killed him. It happened on Aug. 4, within 13 hours of the Texas shooting.

It’s not the first time that news of a shooting has put Austin in “a dark spot” as she continues to recover from the physical wounds that have required three surgeries so far and countless hours of therapy, both physical and psychological. Austin shows an image from her recovery from 12 gunshots.

It’s common for survivors of trauma to re-experience them when similar events occur, said Kate Chard, a professor of clinical psychiatry who heads the UC Health Stress Center in Cincinnati.

“It can be very hard to move forward,” Chard said. She said it’s important to “normalize that it’s natural to have these emotions.”

Austin represents the wider damage gun violence leaves behind — the victims who survive but need months or years to heal. For example, Austin was one of two people wounded in Cincinnati shooting. In 2016, dozens were wounded in the Pulse nightclub

attack in Orlando that killed 49, while hundreds were wounded in the Las Vegas shooting that killed 58 in 2017.

In the wake of the Dayton shooting, Austin called and texted friends in the area to make sure they and their loved ones were OK.

“So a really hard day, and it’s even more hard for all those that have been impacted,” Austin said in a video she made afterward. “I know it makes you feel out of control. It makes me feel out of control.”

She posted the video to the Facebook page for Whitney/ Strong, an organization she started last year to reduce gun violence.