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SALT LAKE CITY — It's been 10½ years since Carolyn Tuft was wounded and her teenage daughter was killed in a mass shooting at Trolley Square Mall.
"I am aware of the pain and feel it every minute of every single day," Tuft said Tuesday. "I wake up in the morning and feel so nauseous and in so much pain, and it takes forever to get going."
Tuft was shot twice when gunman Sulejman Talovic entered the Salt Lake City mall on the evening of Feb. 12, 2007, and began firing. Tuft survived her injuries, but her daughter, 15-year old Kirstin Hinckley, was one of five people killed.
"I would give anything to have a new picture of her," Tuft said.
Seeing news of mass shootings always affects her in ways most of us can't imagine, but she said the Las Vegas shootings really got to her.
"Seeing the images of people crouched over their loved ones to try and protect them, it just put me back at Trolley Square," she said.
That's because Tuft also tried to shield her daughter from the gunfire.
"People don't understand it; it completely rips your life away," she said.
Related:
Looking back at the Trolley Square shooting 10 years later
Feb. 12, 2017 marked 10 years since one of the more tragic days in Salt Lake’s history. Here a look back at how Salt Lake reacted to the news 10 years ago.And the thing about being in something like this is time sort of stands still. Even though time does move on; for survivors, it also almost stops.
"I cried for the people that are now going to live the life I have lived the past 10 and a half years," Tuft said. "They have no idea what's ahead of them. It's hell."
Tuft has become an advocate for new gun laws but is careful not to say "gun control." She believes in the Second Amendment and knows laws may not have stopped the shootings in Las Vegas, but she feels something needs to change.
"It's scary," Tuft said. "You can't let your kids go to a concert and worry they might not come home, or go to church or school or go shopping, in my case."
She also knows the more than 500 survivors of Sunday's attack are only in the first week of what has been 10 years for her.
"There's nothing I can say to those people who are going to live my life, except: 'Look for the silver lining.' Because that's all I can do now is look for the good things in each day," she said.
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Contributing: Jordan Ormond
