BOCA RATON, Fla. — It's been one day since the Martin Luther King Day shooting in Fort Pierce, and many families at the event may begin to feel the trauma, especially young children.
A 9-year-old from Fort Pierce is without a mother after she died from the shooting Monday night. Seven others were shot and four others injured fleeing the scene.
"I think this is a time for a community to pull together. This is where it takes a community to raise a child," said Kristen Bomas, a Boca Raton-based therapist.
"At this time the adults that surround this girl are of critical importance to her healing and to her moving forward," Bomas said. "This was an unknown. They thought they were at a park having a great MLK day when all of a sudden gunshots rang out, and so that unknown becomes a source of fear and terror."
Bomas, who specializes in trauma, says the shooting will have an impact on people who were at the event and witnessed a family member or friend being shot.
"I think it's hard. Trauma does not heal on its own, grief does. ... So I think trauma is one of those things that really would benefit the parent to take a child to a therapist, maybe even the two of them going together," Bomas said.
Bomas says living through a shooting can have some feeling a sense of survivor's guilt, which makes the person who is still alive feel like it should've been them that was hurt.
"They need to talk and honestly about how they're feeling what they're going through, how difficult this is. They want to come up with a positive way to talk about death, and a way to look at this loss and this trauma from a place of healing rather than getting stuck in the anger," Bomas said.
According to Bomas, flashbacks, nightmares and changes in behavior are all signs of trauma, especially for some children. She urges families to establish a support system or seek professional help from a therapist or counselor.
"We're here to help you really understand what you're going through and understand how to do the healing instead of suffering," Bomas said.
Bomas also says it's important to let people grieve in their own way, and of course be patient with them while providing a sense of safety and stability for the person.
