ROCKFORD, Minn. (AP) - For Eric Cegon, the last few months have been filled with sleeping pills, anxiety and visits to a therapist.

His girlfriend, Samantha Simons, is having chest pains she also attributes to anxiety and has also turned back to the religious faith she abandoned as a teenager.

In December, Cegon used a shotgun to fatally shoot Simon's ex-boyfriend, Erik Richter, when he broke into the couple's Rockford home at 3:30 one morning, armed with a gun.

"You killed me," the couple heard Richter gasp after dropping a half-cocked handgun. Cegon shot him a second time, just to be sure.

The Wright County attorney determined that Cegon, 30, was acting in self-defense, and filed no charges against him. But he and Simons, 22, both say they have endured nightmares and violent flashbacks ever since.

"I blocked it out of my mind for a while," said Cegon, who had never owned a gun before he borrowed one from a friend one shortly before the shooting after multiple threats from Richter.

Richter was the father of Simons' 2-year-old son, Jackson, and he and Cegon had been friends who worked on cars together. Simons said she ended the relationship because of his increasing meth use and violence.

Richter reportedly had been threatening to kill Cegon and had also threatened Simons with a knife.

Cegon said the shooting left him in a complete daze for about a week, until he looked at the program for Richter's funeral.

"He broke down and started crying," Simons said. "He looked at me and cried some more. Then he started playing his guitar. I think he tries to block it out because he doesn't want to feel the sadness and the hurt."

That's a normal response to direct involvement in a fatal shooting, said Minneapolis police chaplain Jeffrey Stewart, who counsels officers involved in on-duty shootings.

"We have a desire not to take a human life, even if you are forced and it is the right thing to do," Stewart said.

Cegon and Simons moved out of the apartment where the shooting happened and are living with Cegon's parents in this town about 20 miles west of the Twin Cities while they look for another apartment.

Cegon was rehired for an auto parts delivery job he'd quit shortly before the shooting, fearing that Richter would be able to find him there.

The couple, together only five months, have already been through a lot but said the shooting put a dark cloud over their relationship that's tough to get out of.

"We both are not as happy because of it," Simons said. "I hope we will stay together."

Simons said she knows she'll someday have to explain to Jackson what happened to his dad.

"I don't know how I am going to answer when he brings it up," Simons said. "I won't lie to him about anything."

I hope he understands why we had to do what we had to do."