Backstage during Route 91 Festival
Ex-Rice student rushed to safety, assisted victims during the chaos
Words alone fail to describe the experience of the Route 91 Festival shooting.
I was backstage, having the time of my life hanging out with country music stars Tyler Reeve and Chris Young, about to watch Jason Aldean take the stage. Moments after Aldean began to perform, I ventured over to the backstage bar, which was positioned under a tarp near the performers’ tour buses. While in line, I met a guy who told me how he had snuck into the festival and then snuck backstage.
I was in the middle of saying something to him when I heard a loud, firecracker-like noise. I looked straight up, searching the sky for fireworks. I looked over at the nearby telephone pole to see if anything had exploded. People around me started chattering nervously, and I sensed that something wasn’t right.
Then Aldean stopped singing, and it became quiet for a moment before the crackling noise started up again. Everyone backstage started running for cover. Security guards were screaming: “Take cover, attack, attack!” and “This is not a drill!” I was near musician Brian O’Connell’s tour bus, so I ran for cover behind it as quickly as I could.
What were now obviously gunshots were so loud that I could have sworn someone was shooting at us from no more than 20 to 40 feet away. I saw a woman get shot in the leg as she ran to take cover near the O’Connell tour bus. Several other people and I took off our belts and used them to make a tourniquet. The woman was terrified and crying as a pool of blood began to collect beneath her wound.
I saw numerous people with bloody clothes running around behind and between the buses to help individuals who were injured. It was simply surreal. I camped out behind the tour bus for a solid
hour, still not really understanding what was going on. I told myself I might die today, and I kind of accepted it. I made friends with Eric, the man sitting next to me behind the bus. It turned out that he was in a band with someone I knew. He offered me a cigarette, and we calmly talked about music, living in Las Vegas, and how sometimes life doesn’t really make any sense.
After the shooting finally stopped, a SWAT team moved in and escorted the group I was with to a nearby parking lot. Along the way, I saw three bodies laid out in the street. I still couldn’t mentally process what was happening. When we reached the parking lot, I was reunited with my friends who had also been at the festival. We all piled into a van and tried to make an escape.
What we didn’t realize was that the entire Strip was on lockdown. After taking a wrong turn near McCarran Airport, a police officer stopped us at gunpoint.
“We’re just a band!” screamed a friend. “We’re trying to get away from all this!”
The officer told us to get out of the van, patted us down, then directed us to a nearby airport hangar where several hundred people were gathered. After a few hours, the police escorted us to the University of Nevada-Las Vegas basketball stadium, where I was picked up by the father of one of my friends.
What had begun as a great night of music became, in a matter of minutes, the most devastating event I have ever endured.