KANSAS CITY, Mo. — What should have been a fun weekend away was everything but that for Sarah Pitts.
The 19 year-old from Raytown, Missouri, took a trip to Oklahoma with her boyfriend in late May where they attended an outdoor festival in the city of Taft.
"We had a choice of either going to a rodeo or going to the festival, and we chose to go to the festival," Pitts said. "But looking back on it now, I wish we would have gone to the rodeo to not have all of this happen."
A mass shooting occurred at the festival and one person was killed and seven others were injured, including Pitts.
"I knew that my stomach had hurt and I knew that my foot had hurt, but it just didn't register what had happened to me," she said.
As she scattered, she was shot in the foot and another bullet went through her stomach. Pitts was then taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital in Tulsa.
"After being shot, it was just like everything was in slow motion, but going so fast at the same time," Pitts said. "Like it was just 'boom, boom, boom.' But then like my vision was just so blurry."
Pitts was in the hospital for one week undergoing several surgeries, but days after she was admitted, a gunman opened fire on Tulsa's Saint Francis Hospital campus, killing four people.
"Even talking about it now brings chills all down my body, because it's just that feeling is not a feeling that I want to feel ever again," she said.
While her physical wounds are healing, Pitts told KSHB 41 that mentally, she still has a long road ahead.
"I'll have a really good day where it will be semi-normal, and then some days where it's just flashback after flashback, and I think that I'm starting to learn how to overcome that," Pitts said.
If there's one thing Pitts does know, it's this — "It doesn't have to be everywhere. It should be nowhere," she said.
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