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Bountiful • Sometimes Melissa Cochran starts to get angry at the terrorist who plowed his car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in London three months ago, injuring her and killing her husband, Kurt Cochran, and three others.
But then she stops herself. She refuses to be hateful and knows Kurt wouldn't want that either.
"I can't be angry because that would stop my healing process," Melissa said Saturday at a memorial concert honoring her husband. "I just don't have it in my heart."
Kurt fell from Westminster Bridge on March 22 when an SUV driven by Khalid Masood mowed down a group of pedestrians. With a shattered leg, broken rib and several other injuries, Melissa was left fighting for her life. The couple had been on a trip celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary.
On Saturday, a teary Melissa recalled her husband as someone with a magnetic personality and a deep love for music. The West Bountiful couple ran Onion Street Studio, a music recording and rehearsal business in the basement of their home.
"People just stuck to him," Melissa said. "I couldn't not be with him."
She joked the event would've been much larger had Kurt organized it. Still, more than 100 attended the memorial, which included tunes from a series of bands that had recorded at the studio. One band comprised several members of the Cochran family — including Kurt's son, Dallas Cochran, on guitar.
Family and friends traveled from California, Idaho, Colorado and Texas for the event at Bountiful City Park.
One man flew in from London.
London Metropolitan Police Force Officer Keith Malda worked to keep Melissa alive for about an hour before Westminster Bridge was cleared and she could be transported to a hospital.
Malda on Saturday recalled a normal afternoon shift until "the radios started to go crazy" with reports of the attack.
Malda and other members of his team — the first officers to arrive — were unarmed and were not supposed to go onto the bridge. But they disobeyed, he said.
"There was body after body after body laying on the floor," said Malda, who also was a first responder for the June 3 London Bridge attack.
Eventually, Malda came across Melissa. Although she was only semiconscious, she managed to tell Malda her name. He and another person worked to keep her alive, he said, before paramedics were allowed onto the bridge. Malda then accompanied her to the hospital.
He said it was remarkable that doctors were not only able to save her life but also her leg, which "was not in a good way" when he found her. In the following days, he visited Melissa in the hospital several times. They eventually became Facebook friends.
"She's just such an inspiring person, like the way she was talking, literally a day or two after it happened," Malda said. "She's just lost husband, she almost didn't make it herself — if that was me, I would've been hellbent on revenge, angry and furious at the person that had done it."
But Melissa wasn't like that at all, Malda said. She sounded totally concentrated, he said, on "what a great person Kurt was."
"It's because of him that I'm here today," Melissa said of Malda.
She said she remembers almost nothing of the attack — just crossing the bridge and pausing to look down at her camera. At the time, the couple "couldn't believe how much fun they were having," she said.
Following the attack, Melissa's brother Clint Payne said, family members gathered in London and discussed what kind of service they should hold for Kurt.
"It was immediately obvious that a funeral was not what he would've wanted," Payne said, noting that Kurt was an upbeat type of guy. "And it was immediately obvious that it should be a concert.
"If he was here, he would be torn between wanting to be running the sound, wanting to be up on the stage, and going around and talking to everyone," Payne said.
Kurt — a guitar player and big classic rock fan — loved local bands and often gave them opportunities to record in his studio, Payne said. Melissa said Kurt also liked listening to live music and organizing shows. She stressed his "big heart" and kindness toward everyone he met.
"This seemed like a fitting celebration for him," she said.
Twitter: @lramseth