One of the following Survivor roommates Four students of Idaho killed students Brian Kohberger In 2022, he spoke at his sentence hearing on Wednesday.
This was the first time Dylan Mortenson spoke publicly since the killings of Madison Mogan, Kaylee Gonclaves, Xna Karnodal and Ethan Chapin on 13 November 2022. Kohberger pleaded guilty Earlier this month, he was spared from the death penalty as part of a petition for murders. Judge Steven Hippler sentenced him to four lives in jail on Wednesday without the possibility of parole.
“What happened that night, everything changed,” Mortenson started, reading his affected effect through tears after taking a few moments to collect itself. “Because of that, four beautiful, real, kind people were taken from this world without any reason.”
Mortenson, who had turned 19, who had turned 19 years old, said that Kohberger also took away his ability to rely on the world around him.
He said, “They shattered me in the places I did not know.” “I should have found out who I was. I should have had college experience and started establishing my future. Instead, I was forced to know how to survive unimaginable.”
He described that he describes being alone or closing his eyes and closing the attacks of nervousness that “is like a tsunami from anywhere.”
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“I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t stop moving,” he said. “This is beyond anxiety, it is giving relief from my body repeatedly. My nervous system never got the message that it is over, and it would not forget me what he did to them.”
Without saying his name, Mortenson described Kohberger as “a Holll vessel, less than human, a body without sympathy, without repentance”.
“He chose destruction, he chose evil, he feels that nothing, he tried to take everything from me: my friend, my safety, my identity, my future,” he said.
However, Mortenson said that he cannot take his voice.
“Live is how I honor them,” he said. “Speaking today helps me find some kind of justice for them and I will never let him take him. He may have taken so much from me, but he will never take my voice.
“He will never take the memories present with him. He will never erase the love shared by us, the laughter that we had or the way he saw me and felt the whole. Those things are mine, they are holy and they will never touch them.
“I feel sad, I feel anger, I feel happy, when it is difficult, I still feel love, when it is pain, I still think, and when I still live with this pain, I get at least to live my life. He will remain empty, forgotten and powerless here.”
After completing his statement, Hippler thanked him for courage.
Kyle Green / AP 
Just before Mortenson spoke, a friend was read by a friend of other living roommates, Bethni Phanke.
In her statement, Fank said that when she woke up that day, she did not know what happened.
He said, “I still regret so much and guilty to know what happened and (911) was not calling, even though I think it would not have changed anything, even if the paramedics was right outside the door, not,” he said.
He said that Phanke faced death threats and online murders.
“Social media made it very bad and strangers made stories to entertain themselves,” she said. “The media harassed not only me but also my family.
Funke also felt the crime of the survivor.
“I still think about it every day: why? Why I had to live and not them? The longest, I could not see their families without feeling ill with crime,” he said.
Phanke also felt the fear that “never leaves,” but said she reminds herself to live for her friends.
“Whatever I do, I do it to them,” he said. “I know they want me to live my life completely.”
