From combat to massacre
Excited, angry and manic. The words were part of a message that Chris Roybal wrote on Facebook that is now atop a page designed to remember him.
Roybal wrote the post — which contemplates what it’s like to be shot — 2½ months before a gunman fatally shot the Aurora resident and 58 others late Sunday in Las Vegas.
The shooting attack by Stephen Paddock, 64, also led to the injuries of 527 others attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival.
Roybal knew what it was like to be a target because he had served a tour in Afghanistan in the Navy.
“It was never fear, to be honest, mass confusion. Sensory overload … followed by the most amount of natural adrenaline that could never be duplicated through a needle,” Roybal wrote in the July 18 message that mentioned bullets pinging off metal all around him.
“These words will be stuck with me forever. I will never forgive this world from taking him away,” girlfriend Maree Elmore wrote on Facebook on Monday, referring to Roybal’s self-answered question: “What’s it like being shot at?”
Roybal was celebrating his imminent 29th birthday with his mother, Debby Allen of Corona, Calif., when they became two of 22,000 random targets of Paddock.
“Today is the saddest day of my life,” Allen wrote Monday. “My son Christopher Roybal was murdered last night in Las Vegas. My heart is broken in a billion pieces.”
Roybal’s explanation of what it is like to be shot at was written almost like a journal narrative. He noted that fewer than 1 percent of the U.S. population ever experiences becoming a shooter’s target. But while he was on duty in Afghanistan, he endured that experience daily in what has been called the deadliest place on Earth.
Before he experienced combat, Roybal had his own opinion of “what it would be like to be a real gunfighter in the modern day Wild Wild West.”
“What’s it like to be shot at? It’s a nightmare no amount of drugs, no amount of therapy and no amount of drunk talks with your war veteran buddies will ever be able to escape.”
The experience emboldened Roybal. He was ready to “take on what became normal everyday life in the months to follow. Taking on the fight head on, grabbing the figurative ‘Bull by the horns.’ ”
But he added that, over time, the excitement fades and “anger is all that’s left. The anger stays, long after your friends have died, the lives you’ve taken are buried and your boots are placed neatly in a box in some storage unit.
Despite his gloomy military career, Roybal was the ultimate optimist, said David Harman, who promoted Roybal to assistant manager at his gym-management company and sent him to open a Crunch Fitness gym in Colorado Springs in February.
Roybal recently moved to Aurora.
“He was always fired up and happy,” Harman said. “Christopher Roybal was probably the most positive person on the planet, especially considering what he went through in Afghanistan.”
He always kept eye contact with people, had an infectious laugh, and was a hard worker and a problem solver. Harman said Roybal had no experience as a fitness trainer when he hired him.
“What he did have was personality. He was ambitious. He wanted to move up. He was our first boots on the ground in Colorado,” Harman said.