Weyburn residents ran for lives as shots rang out

Todd and Elan Lawrence of Weyburn and four friends were enjoying the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas — it was a holiday they’d planned for months. Then their good times turned to terror.

A lone gunman from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino started opening fire on the music festival crowd.

“When the shooting first started, it seemed to me that it was just firecrackers or somebody pulling some kind of a gag,” Todd said. “It didn’t really register to me that it was a shooter. But when the second round of shooting began, it got a lot louder and a lot more obvious that it was a shooter.

“Everybody kind of hit the ground. We couldn’t tell if there was a sniper or multiple shooters. Over the next 20 minutes, the shooting just kept coming and coming and coming.”

Trying to duck the barrage of bullets, Lawrence took cover by a wooden bar that became a makeshift shelter for the terrified concertgoers. “Somebody had just been shot and was laying beside it

dead,” he said.

Another man who took cover by the bar was bleeding from a shot to the thigh. “When the next round of firing came along, he jumped on top of me to cover or protect me,” Lawrence said.

The man who threw himself onto Lawrence was a stranger.

“It was pretty amazing,” said Lawrence, the operations manager for Aldon Oils. Pandemonium followed. “We didn’t know how many gunmen there were or if it was a terrorist attack,” Lawrence said.

A female security guard yelled at him: “You’ve gotta get up and get out of here!”

Lawrence started running out of the concert grounds, but he couldn’t find his wife, Elan. Prior to the shots, the couple had taken bathroom breaks and their friends went to get drinks. The group was separated in the mass confusion.

“I got to the Tropicana Hotel and I was able to get a hold of my wife on the phone and found out she’d gotten to safety with a lady from California, who she didn’t know,” Lawrence said.

“They were at the Excalibur. I made my way over to the Excalibur and we spent about an hour-anda-half locked in these people’s hotel room because we didn’t know how many gunmen there were. We were getting reports that there were gunmen in all sorts of hotels along the strip.”

He didn’t know what happened to the other members of his group: Jerry and Teresa LaFoy, Kerri Robins and Darren Larson.

Minutes before the shooting began, the group of four were close to the stage, but moved to the back of the crowd to get drinks.

“We were standing back there and I turned to my buddy and said, ‘Gee, that sounds like fireworks, but there’s nothing in the sky.’ Seconds later, the first barrage began and it seemed like it was relentless,” Jerry said.

Initially, everybody was in shock. Then en masse they raced toward exits.

“We hit the ground a couple of times and we got to a chain-link fence, which was probably eight feet high and people had put a barricade up against it to crawl over it,” LaFoy said. “We were able to do that and there were people on the other side helping. My wife actually had a dress on, so she had a little trouble getting over it.”

Once over the fence, the four ran toward the Excalibur Hotel and Casino.

“People started running out of the Excalibur saying the shooter was there, so we ran towards another hotel and the same thing,” LaFoy said. “We were staying at the MGM Grand and we got up the back stairway and got into our hotel room and pushed chairs against the door and sat in the dark. We didn’t know if there were people in the building or if it was a terrorist attack.”

He didn’t see anyone with injuries, but sensed bullets flying around him.

“It was a constant spray of bullets,” LaFoy said. “It was just like popcorn — hard to explain.”

In their room, they didn’t know the gunman was dead. “We laid in bed, but every little noise you get up and check the door,” LaFoy said. “We didn’t sleep very much ... We’ve never been that scared in our lives.”

Relaxing by the Flamingo, Chandra and Shane Miller of Regina didn’t hear the shots and were oblivious to the carnage farther down the strip.

“A guy went running by and yelled: ‘You guys better get going, there’s a shooter coming down the strip.’ ” Chandra said. “We weren’t sure what to think. There’s lots of people on the strip that do weird things. We kind of sat there for a minute and all of a sudden people started running by like crazy and everybody was yelling, ‘Get going. Get going, a shooter is coming.’ ”

The couple went to Caesars Palace, but they were told it was in lockdown.

“We went running trying to find somewhere to hide and these guys were standing outside a doorway to a restaurant and they said, ‘You guys come in here,’ ” Chandra said. “They sent us into the mall and we were in lockdown in the Caesars Palace mall for three or four hours. They finally gave us the clear.”

Walking down the strip was eerie, she said. No cars were cruising up and down the street — only police vehicles.

Police stopped the couple at the Aria and told them they couldn’t return to the Excalibur where they had a room.

They turned back and checked into the Aria for the night.

On Monday, when they got back into their room at the Excalibur, they saw a heavy police presence across the street where the shooting had occurred.

“It was really scary and you think, ‘Is this actually happening?’ ” Chandra said. “You go to Vegas for a vacation and the next thing you know, everybody is running down the strip trying to find somewhere to go and there were cops everywhere ... It was such a creepy feeling.”

The Lawrences and friends attended the country music festival last year and enjoyed it. No one in their group was injured physically, but the trauma they endured took an emotional toll.

“We’re not really doing all that good, but we’re going to work through it,” Lawrence said.

The group is to return to Saskatchewan on Tuesday.

When asked if he’d return to Vegas, Lawrence said: “No. Never.”