Trump meets survivors of Las Vegas massacre
Survivor tells of being shot and hit by shrapnel
PRESIDENT DONALD Trump declared it a “very, very sad day” for himself and the nation as he arrived in Las Vegas where a gunman killed 59 people at a concert.
He last night met with survivors and law enforcement officials in the aftermath of the worst mass shooting in modern US history.
The president arrived on board Air Force One just days after a gunman on the 32nd floor of a hotel and casino opened fire on people at an outdoor country music festival below.
The Sunday night rampage killed at least 59 people and injured 527, some from gunfire and some during the chaotic escape.
“It’s a very sad thing. We are going to pay our respects and to see the police who have done really a fantastic job in a very short time,” Mr Trump told reporters.
He said the authorities were “learning a lot more” about the gunman, Stephen Paddock, and that more details would be “announced at an appropriate time”.
“It’s a very, very sad day for me personally,” he said.
The president’s trip to Las Vegas follows his Tuesday visit to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico – a pair of back-to-back episodes that are testing his ability to unite and lift the US in times of strife.
Mr Trump, a leader who excels at political provocation and prides himself on commanding strength, has sometimes struggled to project empathy.
His visit came as the gunman’s girlfriend is being quizzed by police as they attempt to find out why a man with no record of violence or crime would carry out such an attack. Police are said to be confident they will discover what prompted the attack.
A 43-YEAR-OLD nurse who was shot during the Las Vegas Strip massacre has said she can hardly believe she is still alive, 48 hours after taking a bullet through the stomach and having her leg ripped apart by shrapnel.
Speaking from her hospital bed, Natalie Vanderstay described scenes of carnage as she fled the massacre despite sustaining her own terrible injuries.
She recalls being trampled and shot before summoning a survival instinct to find a way out.
Ms Vanderstay stepped on people to save herself - something she said may haunt her forever.
Speaking from University Medical Centre, she recalled: “I said: ‘OK, I can’t stay here. I’m going to bleed out.’ It hurt so bad.
“But I knew I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t ready to die.”
The staggering count of people injured in the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival on Sunday means their recoveries are likely to be as varied as the victims themselves.
Some injuries are as simple as broken bones, while others are gunshot wounds involving multiple surgeries and potential transplants.
All come with the added emotional scars of enduring the deadliest shooting in modern US history, which left 59 people dead.
Ms Vanderstay is one of more than 500 people injured that night.
At least 130 of them remain in hospital, with 48 listed in critical condition.
At Sunrise Hospital and Medical Centre alone, the count of those treated included 120 people who were struck by gunfire, a chilling insight into the amount of ammunition unleashed in the attack.
Rehabilitation for the most seriously hurt victims will take far longer than many may realise.
Dr Thomas Scalea, physicianin-chief at the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Centre in Baltimore, one of the nation’s largest trauma centres, said recovery could take years. “It’s not days or weeks.”
For Ms Vanderstay, there are physical wounds that she as a nurse knows will take many weeks or longer to heal.
She underwent surgery to have her colon and small intestine resectioned, meaning portions were removed.
Then there are the memories of how her she received her injuries and how one night out with friends at a concert turned into a scene of almost unimaginable horror.
“People were screaming. And the screams got louder and louder,” she said.
“I felt this force in my stomach and I knew that I had gotten shot.”
When the gunfire ripped into her, “it felt like a huge baseball, just the force of it going through my stomach”.
She could see that her leg had been “filleted open,” she said, and she recalled taking off her flannel shirt to bind her leg.
Ms Vanderstay said: “There were people that were dead. There was a guy, his eye was blown out, and I couldn’t help him.”
At the site of the attack, people fashioned stretchers out of fence posts and tarpaulin and made tourniquets out of belts. At local hospitals, the scene was similarly grave.
I knew I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t ready to die. Nurse Natalie Vanderstay, 43, who was injured in the attack.