Hero ‘saves 30 people’ before being shot

LAS VEGAS: A man has been credited with saving some 30 people during the Las Vegas concert shooting before being hit by a bullet.

Jonathan Smith, 30, went to the concert with nine members of his family.

As the rounds began to fly at the Mandalay Bay hotel, his elder brother, Louis Rust, grabbed them and told them all to run.

But Smith, focused on saving his nieces, turned back into the crowd when they became separated, the Washington Post said.

Fellow concert-goers were paralysed in fear, he said, so he kept shouting, “Active shooter, let’s go!” while pushing them towards a parking area. “I got a few people out of there,” he said. But while trying to reach a group of children a bullet struck him in the neck, fracturing his collarbone, cracking a rib and bruising a lung.

“I might have to live with this bullet for the rest of my life,” Smith said. Doctors have left it in place for now. The copy machine engineer said an offduty police officer likely saved his life, by trying to staunch the bleeding and then finding him a lift to hospital.

Smith’s family escaped safely, it was reported.

He told the Post he did not see himself as a hero, though he has been held up as one after an image of him in hospital went viral.

“I would want someone to do the same for me,” he said. – The Independent