Sunday night's mass shooting in Las Vegas, which claimed the lives of 58 people and counting and injured over 500 others, will continue to yield many horrifying accounts from witnesses as the days go on. Among those who fled the Route 91 Harvest Festival amid a barrage of gunfire was Santa Rosa resident Nadine Reyes, 50, who tells her story to the Chronicle this morning. Reyes, who's attended the festival with her daughter multiple times, was watching headliner Jason Aldean when the popping sounds began. "It sounded like malfunctioning fireworks," Reyes tells the Chron, "like those popping things you throw on the ground."
Reyes and her daughter ducked for cover and she says she's grateful that a man came and laid on top of her and her daughter until a break came in the gunfire and they were able to run further away from the festival grounds. Reyes says they ran to a fence surrounding the neighboring McCarren Airport, which was then knocked down by a four-wheel-drive vehicle and dozens of survivors then ran onto the tarmac. A friend of Reyes, who is a nurse, tended to a man with gunshot wound to his leg.
Reyes tells the Chronicle that she and others were first taken to a holding area at the University of Las Vegas and then she later got a hotel room in Henderson, Nevada at 3:30 a.m. She was expecting to be allowed back to her original hotel today to pack and get on a rescheduled flight back to the Bay Area.
Meredith Rich of Santa Clara tells NBC Bay Area that she was staying on the same floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel as the 64-year-old man who's been identified as the shooter, Stephen Craig Paddock. Rich was in Las Vegas for a work conference, and says she cowered in her bathroom on the 32nd floor for over an hour after the shooting began. She later heard the SWAT team storm Paddock's room, where they found he was dead of a self-inflicted wound, and she then had to submit to a search of her room.
Below is some raw video from NBC Bay Area speaking to people arriving from Vegas at SFO. Among them is Las Vegas resident Andre Walters who works in the Bay Area during the week, and who was still wearing his Route 91 festival wristband. He and his girlfriend decided not to attend the festival Saturday or Sunday, but he was still shaken by the close call.
Update: We are just learning that among the missing after the shooting is the wife of an SFPD officer.
ABC 7 caught up with a Gilroy couple who were at all three days of the music festival and were traumatized by the events of last night. Both of them got out physically unscathed and hid in a nearby apartment complex over night with a group of other survivors. They arrived at SFO still wearing their festival wristbands.
People arriving home to South Bay from #LasVegas still wearing concert bracelets.This couple keeps hearing gunshots over & over in head pic.twitter.com/3yqcZadhSs
— Janine De la Vega (@JanineDLV) October 2, 2017
This Gilroy couple was at concert when shooting began.They ran for their lives.Their friend was trampled, but survived #LasVegasShooting pic.twitter.com/QXCuJ9jjgB
— Janine De la Vega (@JanineDLV) October 2, 2017