Lasamoa and Cody Lanier.Photo: Courtesy Lasamoa Lanier
On July 20, 2012, 19-year-old Lasamoa Cross went to the midnight premiere ofThe Dark Knight Risesin Aurora, Colo., with her fiancé, 18-year-old A.J. Boik. About 30 minutes into the movie, a heavily armed gunman walked into the theater and opened fire,killing 12 people and injuring 70 others.
“When A.J. and I realized that something very bad was happening, we stood up and he grabbed my hand,” Lasamoa tells PEOPLE. “We were getting ready to leave, and he turned around and looked at me in the most shocked way, and then hit the ground.”
Unable to transport her injured fiancé out of the theater, Lasamoa and Boik became separated.
“I had not thought ‘worst case scenario,'” Lasamoa says. “At some point between me being out in the parking lot and SWAT arriving to close off the doors, I figured, ‘Oh, A.J. might have gotten out at a different exit door.'”
She recognized Cody because he was the school resource officer at the high school from which she graduated the previous year. Lasamoa asked Cody for help locating A.J. — but sadly, after waiting for an answer for 18 hours, Lasamoa learned that her fiancé of four months had been killed in the shooting.
“My world, my whole identity, was shook,” she says.
In the months that followed, Lasamoa dropped out of school and abandoned her plans of becoming a teacher, a plan she’d made with A.J.
“He wanted to be a teacher and I wanted to be a teacher, and 50 percent of that element was gone,” Lasamoa says.
Lasamoa and A.J. Boik.Courtesy Lasamoa Lanier
In the 2015 trial that followed, Lasamoa, now 29, reached out to Cody again after realizing first responders could relate to the trauma she went through during the shooting.
The two eventually met for lunch at a Chipotle. Before they knew it, four hours had passed. A healing friendship was quickly sparked, and in 2016, the pair began dating. In 2021, they married. This October is the couple’s two-year wedding anniversary.
“Because of Cody, I have been able to open my heart and heal and open my heart to others,” says Lasamoa, who took Cody’s last name, Lanier.
“I don’t know where I would be necessarily had it not been for Lasamoa and I developing the closeness that we did,” Cody, 39, tells PEOPLE.
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The couple’s family members quickly began to see how beneficial the relationship was.
“We love Cody with Lasamoa; this guy, he’s just amazing,” Lasamoa’s sister, Eleanor O’Bard tells PEOPLE. “She’s also amazing, too.”
“For me I was very happy to know that this became a love story,” O’Bard adds.
The couple wed on Oct. 3, 2021 in Silverthorne, Colo., with their family and loved ones surrounding them.
Lasamoa and Cody Lanier.Lasamoa Cross/Instagram
“What an amazing, beautiful, eloquent wedding it was,” O’Bard says. “From the catering to the decorations and everything throughout, it was just so beautiful. It was so touching how everyone was like so supportive and loving to the two of them.”
Although Lasamoa and Cody have both faced hardships, they still remember the victims every year on the anniversary of the shooting.
Stuffed animals, flowers and crosses were placed at a memorial to the victims of the Aurora shooting.Orjan F. Ellingvag/Corbis/Getty
“Lots of family would get together for the anniversary of July 20th and they would try to keep the memory alive of everyone involved,” 19-year-old Mikayla Lanier, Cody’s daughter from a previous relationship, tells PEOPLE. “I think in my younger years, those were the years when my dad and ‘La’ truly got to know each other and help each other through such a tragedy.”
When describing their love story, Lasamoa says, “It’s all very unconventional in every single way.”
source: people.com
