EVERGREEN, Colo. (AP) — Ian Sullivan visits his daughter’s grave on her birthday every year since a gunman burst into a crowded Colorado movie theater and shot the 6-year-old as she sat with her mother in the third row.
And every year he finds a birthday card, put there by the man who was with Veronica when Sullivan wishes he could have been: The police officer who carried the dying girl out of the theater in his arms.
Sullivan’s is one of the many horror stories that emerged from the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, in suburban Denver, where James Holmes killed 12 people, including Veronica, and injured 70 others in July 2012.
Since then, survivors have been trying to reconstruct their lives, finding comfort in each other or seeking a higher purpose. A couple, wounded, got married. A father who lost his son became a gun control advocate. Others turned to faith.
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He told the officer the hardest part was feeling powerless and unable to protect his daughter.
“I know it took a lot out of him as well. I could see how much damage it had done to him,” he said.
Getting the sporadic text messages and seeing the birthday cards reminds him that someone else out there – who was with Veronica when he couldn’t be – is thinking about his pain.
“It helps to understand there’s still someone there who actually cares,” he said.
