Mass confusion and panic !
That’s how a Quesnel couple describe being at the music festival in Las Vegas last night, the sight of the deadliest shooting in modern U-S history.
We spoke to Kevin Christieson, who was at the airport this morning with his wife Audrey, waiting to get home.
He says it sounded like firecrackers going off and that many of the roughly 30,000 people started stampeding out.
Christieson says they got behind a metal rail and made their way under the bleachers for cover…
“Once we were under the bleachers we laid on our bellies and we just took cover and sat there and we were listening to the guns shoot off and it just seemed like forever, there were so many shots, it was a very, very frightening experience, the guns probably went off for it seemed like 10 minutes. There was so much uncertainty and so many shots. We were scared for our lives, all we could think of is get down and hope for the best. We texted our kids and let them know we were ok for the moment and we were going to let them know and that we loved them and we just hoped for the best.”
Christieson says once the shooting stopped they were told by security that they could leave the grounds…
“As we were leaving we saw many, many people were shot, we saw somebody that was shot in the neck, we saw lots of people shot in the legs or in the arms, it was, it was a pretty surreal experience to say the least.”
He says even that was nerve wracking as they weren’t sure the shooter was finished.
Chrstieson says they eventually made it to the neighboring Tropicana Hotel and, while in a 12-foot hallway in the basement, there were more dramatics…
“At the end of the hall someone said the gunman’s in here and all a sudden there was mass panic in this hallway and everybody started running down this hallway. It was about a 12 foot wide hallway and people were running through garbage, they were breaking bottles all over the place, most people were in sandals, it was massive panic. We got into a staff room in the basement of the Tropicana and we were in the kitchen and everybody that were were with were hiding in steel like kitchen units.”
Fortunately that turned out to be a false alarm.
Christieson says they were then taken to the convention centre in the hotel where they stayed until 4 a.m.