‘Put him on my body, if that’s what it takes’
Nurse sprang into action to get injured to hospitals
The man lay hysterical and bleeding on top of Lorisa Loy in a stranger’s truck bed packed with shooting victims, hurtling toward one of the valley’s hospitals.
Loy knew three things about him: He was an Asian man, he appeared to be in his 30s and he was bleeding badly from two gunshot wounds to his leg.
“They were trying to say our truck was too full. I said, ‘He needs to go now,’” said Loy, a Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center nurse. “I said, ‘Put him on my body, if that’s what it takes. He needs to go now.’”
After a gunman fired into a crowd of more than
20,000 people Oct. 1, Loy was one of the Route 91
Harvest concertgoers who bolted into action to help the wounded.
There were 58 people killed. The man who rode on top of Loy is among the more than 500 who were injured.
On the way to the hospital, Loy whispered to him and kissed his head, trying to divert his attention and make him feel safe.
“I think I kissed this man’s head 10,000 times,” she said. “I said, ‘You’re going to be OK. Your bleeding is controlled now. We’re taking you to the hospital. You’ve got to stay with me. You’re awake, aren’t you?’”
She never got his name.
It’s one of her only vivid memories of that night.
Loy can’t recall the color of the truck. She doesn’t know the driver’s name. She doesn’t remember how many trips they made or where she was when she jumped out of the truck bed and heard her ankle snap and pop. It took her a few days for Loy to see a doctor.
It took three weeks to remember how she finally reunited with her daughter, Meghan. The 20-year-old college student was helping to lift a woman who had been shot in the chest onto the truck Loy was riding in.
Loy started working as a critical care float nurse at Sunrise on Sept. 11. After spending a couple years working as an insurance case manager, Loy was thrilled to get back on the floor, working with patients.
But days later, a drunk driver hit Loy’s car on Sahara Avenue. The whiplash was agonizing, but she was OK.
Then the shooting happened.
Loy is wearing a boot for her injured ankle. She can hobble around her Henderson home, but she can’t drive. She needs surgery. That and aggressive physical therapy will keep her out of work for another few months.
‘You don’t meet a stranger’
The Fort Wayne, Indiana, native describes country fans like her fellow Midwesterners.
“You don’t meet a stranger. Everyone is friendly,” Loy said.
Loy and her daughter, Meghan, made lasting friends at this year’s festival. It started Friday night, when Meghan started dancing with a man in a wheelchair.
On the second night, Meghan ran into the man, George Cook, again. And Sunday night, Meghan was with George again.
The two wanted to be front and center for Jason Aldean. As they wove through the crowd, Meghan spotted Lorisa. George and Meghan pushed toward the stage more.
That’s when the gunfire started.
Meghan thought the pops were fireworks at first, but George was sure they were shots.
That’s when Loy ran up.
“She said ‘I’m Meghan’s mom. We just met. I’m going to get you out of here,’” Cook said.
They came across his brother, Chris, on the way. He took over pushing the wheelchair out the back of the venue. Loy started to triage people and help load them into vehicles.
After making the hospital trips,
Loy ended up back at the Tropicana. A Boston firefighter who was at the concert had offered his hotel room to Meghan so she could get some rest. When the lockdown at the Tropicana lifted, Loy walked over to the Hooters Hotel and almost immediately saw the Cook brothers.
George Cook thanked Loy for saving his life. She had no idea what he was talking about. But just then, the televisions flashed a photo of Loy wheeling Cook to safety.
‘Someone put Lorisa there’
The Cook brothers were staying on the 31st floor of the Mandalay Bay. They were able to get back into their room and retrieve their things Monday morning.
They got to the airport later that day to fly back to the San Francisco Bay Area. Any positive feeling George Cook had about coming out of a mass shooting unscathed vanished when he learned fellow Californian Stacee Etcheber was missing. Cook grew up in the same neighborhood as Etcheber’s husband, Vinnie. Cook saw Stacee Etcheber Sunday night, when she went over and hugged him. It was about 20 minutes before the shooting started, he estimates.
He later found out Etcheber was among the 58 shooting victims.
This year was the Cook brothers’ second time at the Route 91 festival. Last year, George Cook’s wife died two days after he got home from Las Vegas.
“Someone put Lorisa there to keep me around for my kids,” Cook said.
Since Oct. 1, Loy checks in with George or Chris Cook a few times a week. She plans to go to San Francisco to visit them.
“This won’t deter me from my life or the things I enjoy. He won’t have that power,” Loy said about the shooter.
Cook lives near AT&T Park in San Francisco, and he started going to country music concerts there a few years ago, mostly out of convenience. He wasn’t a big fan of the music, but it’s really grown on him. He’s been to a couple concerts since the shooting, and he’s headed to Country Rising in Nashville this weekend.
Loy and Cook would both return to the Las Vegas Village fairgrounds for another show.
But the next music festival on
Loy’s radar is Stagecoach in April in Southern California.
She and her daughter are planning to meet their two new friends there.
Contact Jamie Munks at jmunks@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0340. Follow @Jamiemunksrj on Twitter.