Vegas massacre victim recalled by grieving husband, Tewksbury
Country music fans who tenderly placed his dying wife in the back of a pickup truck and a JetBlue pilot who knelt down to gift his wings to their heartbroken daughter were among the strangers thanked yesterday by the widower of Rhonda LeRocque, the Tewksbury woman murdered during a massacre on the Las Vegas Strip.
“Words cannot properly describe the loss we feel and the emptiness Rhonda’s death leaves in all of us,” Jason LeRocque said in a statement read by his cousin Ken Ball at Tewksbury police headquarters. “We are heartened, however, by the vast outpouring of love, support, tenderness and giving we have seen literally since the moment those horrific shots started.”
It was LeRocque’s first public comment since he and the families of 57 other people lost loved ones in the Oct. 1 rampage that would become the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. Rhonda LeRocque was 42. The couple, married 21 years, have a 6-year-old daughter, Aliyah.
LeRocque said he, his wife, their daughter and his father, Roy LeRocque, had gone to Vegas to attend the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Roy LeRocque, he said, was babysitting their daughter at their hotel while the couple were at the country music show.
LeRocque said his wife was among the first victims hit by gunfire coming from a 32nd-floor window of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino hotel.
Though stressing, “All of this, of course, is a blur for me,” LeRocque, 41, thoughtfully expressed his gratitude to the countless strangers who tried to save his wife’s life — and then his spirits — in the hours after the shots rang out.
Among them, the captain of the JetBlue flight that brought them and Rhonda’s remains home. And who, “upon landing in Boston, came out to speak to us and got down on one knee and gave his wings to Ali,” LeRocque said.
He also thanked the concertgoers who “helped me carry Rhonda off the concert grounds to a safer area and then into the back of a pickup truck.”
“Rhonda was a firm believer in the Bible’s hope for the future that soon death and violent acts will no longer exist,” LeRocque said. “At this time, as difficult as her death is to all who knew her, we are comforted by this message as well, and will continue to share this message with others.”
Visiting hours are today from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Nichols Funeral Home in Wilmington.
A memorial service will be held tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. at Tewksbury High School.