‘Sonny was trying to save my life. I just can’t believe he’s gone’
Tennessee man who took a bullet for his wife one of the many heroes whose stories are emerging in the aftermath of Las Vegas massacre
Pressed against his body, Dr. Heather Gulish Melton felt the force of the bullet enter her husband’s back.
She and Sonny Melton, 29, fell hard onto the trampled grass, his body shielding her from bullets and pounding feet on the final night of Route 91 Harvest music festival. All around them, people had fallen, suffering from gunshot wounds.
“I believe Sonny was trying to save my life. I just can’t believe he’s gone,” Gulish Melton, 48, told the Star from Las Vegas.
What Sonny did is one of the stories of heroism emerging from the shooting that killed 59 people — including four Canadians — and wounded more than 500.
Amid the chaos, people risked their lives to save loved ones and complete strangers, using pickup trucks as ambulances, applying CPR and first aid skills to save the wounded, and helping the panicked find shelter.
From a small town in Tennessee, Gulish Melton and her husband had been attending country music concerts and festivals all year. Route 91 featured one of Sonny’s favourite singers, Eric Church, so they made the trek to Las Vegas and stayed in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, 10 floors directly below gunman Stephen Paddock.
Seconds before the shooting, they’d been singing and dancing at Jason Aldean’s concert.
“The concert was really loud, lights were flashing and I heard a che-cheche. I thought maybe something was happening across the street or there were fireworks,” Gulish Melton said.
She turned to her husband and asked, “Sonny, is that a gun?”
He didn’t think so and for a moment they turned back towards the stage. Suddenly the music stopped, the lights went out and the crowd surged in a panic.
“Sonny grabbed me from behind,” she said, and they started running away from the stage.
He was running behind her, providing cover for his wife when he was shot in the back and collapsed on top of Gulish Melton.
She didn’t stay sheltered under Sonny’s body for long. She twisted on top of him to perform CPR, calling out for help. Blood spilled from his mouth and he was still.
“I think he died on the field,” said Gulish Melton. As a doctor, she knew the chance of survival “was almost zero,” but continued to hope.
She can’t recall how much time passed before two men in their mid-20s ran her way, lifted Sonny across their shoulders and carried him to a nearby pickup truck.
Gulish Melton jumped in beside him and clung on to the sides, as one of the men performed CPR, “barely hanging on because the tailgate was down.” The other crouched nearby. A third man drove them to the Spring Valley Hospital Medical Centre — through stop signs and traffic lights.
Doctors and nurses ran to the truck when it arrived at the emergency department, bringing Sonny inside. Gulish Melton realized her clothes were soaked in blood. Nurses thought she’d been shot.
Sonny was pronounced dead and Gulish Melton collapsed with grief, crying and screaming.
“I just couldn’t believe it was happening. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I still feel like that sometimes.”
She doesn’t know the names of the two men who helped her, but they stayed by her side all night.
“They said to me Sonny will be part of their lives forever.”
Gulish Melton said she’s speaking out because she doesn’t want only the shooter’s story to be heard. She wants people to know who her husband, a registered nurse, was — a hero.
“Even in his last act, he was probably the kindest hearted and good person I knew in my life. Everybody who was ever in contact with him felt that way. He was just a genuine, good person.”
Lindsay Padgett and Mark Jay As soon as the gunshots subsided, Lindsay Padgett and her fiancé Mark
Jay bolted to her truck in a parking lot across the street from the venue, Padgett told ABC News. But they didn’t leave. “There were just people everywhere that needed help,” Padgett said in a Washington Post video.
“Yeah, go ahead, put them all in the back,” she can be heard saying in a video Jay shot on his phone as people pleaded for help.
They piled four wounded people into the bed of the truck, as well as the people caring for them. One man had suffered a bullet to the chest. One girl was shot in the leg. They’d later find out another of the victims was dead.
“I had to go over curbs, I was doing everything I could to keep these people safe,” Jay said.
Halfway there to the hospital, they saw a stopped ambulance and loaded the most critically injured people into it. Jay followed the ambulance to the hospital with the others.
“There’s no way to make sense of it,” Padgett told the Washington Post.
Jonathan Smith “Active shooter, active shooter!”
Jonathan Smith kept shouting that as he focused on saving anyone within arm’s reach. The 30-year-old copy machine repairman grabbed people, telling them to follow him.
Smith and a few others found shelter in a parking area and crouched behind a row of cars. But Smith abandoned the spot to help a few young girls who were exposed.
That’s when he was shot in the neck.
Now in Sunrise Hospital with a fractured collarbone, cracked rib and bruised lung, Smith will likely have to live with the bullet in his neck.
Social media, and his family, quickly took to calling him a hero.
“I don’t see myself that way,” Smith told the Washington Post. “I would want someone to do the same for me. No one deserves to lose a life coming to a country festival.”
Anonymous There were many reports of heroism, but many have not stepped forward to take credit.
Addison Short, 18, was running for her life when she got shot in the knee.
From her hospital bed she told CNN that she yelled for her friend to keep running, before diving under a bar for cover.
A man helped her wrap up her leg, using his belt as a tourniquet.
“It was just gushing out blood everywhere,” she said. “He picked me up, over his shoulder, ran me to a taxi and brought me here to the hospital. It was just the scariest experience of my life.”
Short never found out the man’s name, but says she would have died if it wasn’t for him. With files from Star wire services