AURORA, Colo. — Before the bullets and bloodshed in the movie theater, Stefan Moton was a teenager who did push-ups and boxing exercises in his bedroom, his dreams fixed on becoming a mixed martial arts fighter. Now, his goals are humbler: Strengthen the sections of his upper body that he can still move. Maybe get a new tattoo. Feed himself again.

“I just try to push it aside and move on,” he said. “Focus on getting better.”

Mr. Moton, 21, who was shot through the spine and left paralyzed from the chest down, is among scores of survivors who have taken the witness stand in the murder trial of James E. Holmes, the former neuroscience graduate student charged with carrying out the midnight rampage at a multiplex here in July 2012. But testimony is narrowly focused on the scene inside Theater 9 and whether the gunman was legally sane or insane when he opened fire. Many stories of Aurora’s painful legacy, which families say remains as raw and urgent as ever, have gone untold in court.

Jurors did not hear about how Mr. Moton’s family has been trying to find money to buy a van to accommodate his wheelchair. They have not heard about the victims’ parents who break down sobbing outside the courtroom, the survivors coping with debilitating nerve pain, or the ones who have lost jobs or ended up losing apartments and floating from couch to couch because of depression and lingering trauma.

“A lot of these kids who testified, some didn’t have medical insurance,” said Anita Busch, whose cousin Micayla Medek was among the 12 people killed in the shooting and who has been an advocate for people affected by it. “Some were college-age and working minimum-wage jobs,” Ms. Busch added. “They’re out on their own and struggling to make it.”