LOUISVILLE, Ky. — As families mourn the lives lost in Monday’s mass shooting, a fellow survivor wants them to know they have her support.

Whitney Austin survived the Fifth Third Center shooting at Cincinnati’s Fountain Square in 2018, and has dedicated the past few years to advocacy work in preventing gun violence, through her organization Whitney/Strong. Now she said she’s shocked and saddened to see home, Louisville struck with the same violence.

What You Need To Know

  • Whitney Austin survived a mass shooting at Cincinnati's Fountain Square in 2018

  • She founded Whitney/Strong to advocate for solutions to gun violence

  • Austin believes in safe storage and violence intervention training

  • She's calling for more bipartisan cooperation to find solutions to gun violence

“At first it was disbelief that it was happening in my city and also disbelief that it was happening again in such a similar fashion to what I experienced,” she said. “Then it was thinking about all the families that are impacted in these moments and how their lives will never ever be the same in the way that my life has never been the same.”

For Austin, it was a wake-up call. She was disappointed in herself for seeing shootings like that happen repeatedly on the news and not doing more to prevent them.

“It’s easy to say there’s another mass shooting in another city and to continue to go about your life as if it doesn’t impact you,” she said. “There have been an endless number of mass shootings since my mass shooting.”

Through Whitney/Strong she advocates for bipartisan solutions like safe storage legislation and anti-violence intervention in neighborhoods that experience high rates of gun violence.

“This is not the country we want to live in,” she said. “This is not the world we want our children to inherit and we can do something”

Austin said as the number of mass shootings only increase in number, she said things are only growing sadder and more frustrating. Still, she said there has been some progress that keeps her moving forward.

She said one of the most hopeful moments she’s experienced over the past few years was the passage of the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden last year.

Austin believes there are more ways both sides of the aisle can come together to find legislative solutions to this violence, and as motivation, she calls on everyone to recognize that the people who died Monday could have been anyone.

“I think it’s really important to remember the humanity in all of this and that humans were impacted and that humans will have to go on without their loved ones,” she said.