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Visitors to the Las Vegas Strip described a somber and unusual scene this morning: the usually bustling boulevard was mostly silent, save for the static of walkie-talkies, the shuffle of uniformed Las Vegas police officers and the occasional tourist walking in the sunshine.
From Sunset Road to Tropicana Avenue, Las Vegas Boulevard, one of the world’s most famous streets, was closed to traffic as authorities investigated the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, which occurred last night during the city’s Route 91 Harvest Festival, leaving at least 58 dead and more than 515 wounded.
At 10:08 p.m. Sunday, as more than 22,000 people watched singer Jason Aldean close out the third and final day of the fourth annual country music festival, gunfire rang out over the crowd at the outdoor Las Vegas Village venue, located opposite the Luxor Hotel and Casino and Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
An individual shooter, identified as 64-year-old Mesquite, Nev., resident Stephen Paddock, smashed the windows of his hotel room on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay and released a barrage of bullets on the crowd below.
Justin Zimmerman of Dexter, Iowa, was finishing up a 10-day visit to Las Vegas that included both the iHeartRadio Festival and all three days of Route 91.
“Everything was smooth,” he said of the weekend. “The weather was perfect, and there were a lot of beautiful girls out there.”
Zimmerman and his friends were toward the back of the outdoor venue when he heard the first pops of gunfire. His initial instinct was that it must have been a malfunction of the lighting or sound system. Then reality sunk in.
“I know what that sound is — gunfire,” Zimmerman thought. “I just froze in place, knelt behind a garbage can. You just hear people running and screaming. I kinda just froze and collected my thoughts.”
Zimmerman said that with blasts going off in 15- to 20-second bursts, concertgoers would hit the ground, then get up and run during pauses in the shooting.
“It was like a stampede of people coming at us,” he said. “People not knowing if they want to get up and run or stay down.”
Zimmerman made his way across Las Vegas Boulevard and into the Luxor, where people inside seemed unaware of the tragedy unfolding just outside. “They were still playing video games and they were still at the tables,” said Zimmerman.
As more people sought refuge inside the Luxor, security staff locked down the front doors, admitting those fleeing the scene and keeping everyone inside. TVs at a casino bar were playing news footage of the incident. Zimmerman said that a few times people inside the casino hit the ground, thinking the sounds of gunfire were coming from within the building.
Up and down the Strip, Metro police asked casinos to lock down, keeping guests and those who had fled the festival in place while police moved to locate and engage Paddock, who was finally found dead inside his hotel room. Some casinos remained locked down until early this morning, when those who had taken refuge inside were escorted out and allowed to return to their hotels or other lodging.
Andrew Smith, a Las Vegas native and marketing and VIP director of the Palomino Club, raced toward the scene after receiving a call from his son’s mother who was bartending in the VIP area at Route 91.
“It was kind of a panic at that point,” he recalled. “They were saying multiple shootings and bomb threats in all the major hotels.”
Smith found her inside the Tropicana’s Oakville Steakhouse, where she and others had taken shelter.
“Everyone was under tables and underneath metal structures,” Smith said. “There were probably 200, 250 people. I was stepping over legs and saying excuse me more times than I can remember.”
Those who were injured were hustled to the front of the building, while a field command officer kept everyone else in place. Evidence of the night’s unraveling was easily visible.
“There was blood all over the entrance of the Tropicana causeway and the service tunnel,” Smith said.
Janice Feldberg, wife of this reporter’s cousin, had arrived in Las Vegas Sunday afternoon from Chicago and was inside her hotel room at the New York-New York Hotel & Casino when the shooting began. She said she received no alerts or information from the resort about the incident, but when her husband went down to the casino last night, he was hustled back into the elevator.
“They said, ‘Get back to your room. Everyone has to go back to their room,'” Feldberg said.
When he returned to the casino floor around 5 a.m., people were just being released from the property, having spent the night inside wrapped in towels from the hotel.
As Feldberg and her husband walked down the Strip this morning toward the scene of the shooting, they passed others still dressed up for a night on the town just beginning to make their way to hotel rooms and home.
“It was really weird being outside and everyone being so somber,” Feldberg said. “That’s not Las Vegas. Everyone’s so subdued and talking so quietly. It’s just not Vegas-esque.”
Sоurсе: travelweekly.com
