Kim Gervais was left paralyzed after a gunman opened fire at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in 2017.
Kim Gervais, a grandmother who survived the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, has died just after the two-year anniversary of the massacre.
Gervais was left paralyzed after a gunman opened fire at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on Oct. 1, 2017, in the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history. More than 50 people were killed and hundreds were injured.
On Friday, Gervais' heart stopped due to the stress her injuries had caused her body, her daughter, Amber Manka, confirmed to InsideEdition.com.
"After the shooting she was never the same," her daughter, Amber Manka, told InsideEdition.com. "Her zest for life was definitely lost but yet again she pushed through just to have time with her grandbabies. She was in constant pain."
Gervais, a grandmother from California, had attended the festival with two of her friends, one of whom was killed that day, KPTV reported.
Manka said her mom nearly died in the hospital twice this past June, but the staff was able to revive her. Doctors expected her to have brain damage after those incidents, but she came out with none. Manka called that time a miracle and added that her mother "fought the whole time."
Manka remembers her mother as having a larger than life personality.
"Her smile had two big dimples and it would light up a room. She actually passed her dimples down to my daughter," Manka said. "She was always there for anyone and she helped anyone she could. She was very independent and we all loved to go camping in the desert to ride our quads. She was just a larger than life personality type."
Gervais' sister, Dena Sarvela, told KPTV that her sister, a business owner and mother of two, had hoped to retire and begin traveling before she was shot.
“She was ready to just go abroad and enjoy life, like she should have, and it was snatched from her. She worked her life, and butt off for – just to go enjoy, you know, and she doesn’t get that, she doesn’t get that chance,” Sarvela said.
The family plans to take Gervais’ ashes on a road trip across the U.S. to honor her. Sarvela said Gervais' husband died in the early 2000s.
“I also know she was missing her husband very, very much, and that’s what gives me hope – that she’s with him right now,” Sarvela said.
RELATED STORIES
