INSIDE Unknowns linger, especially motive
RJ database helps connect the survivors
It’s been almost two months and Kevin Anderson still has not washed the blood-stained khaki pants or the navy blue T-shirt he was wearing on Oct. 1. The blood was not his own, but belonged to the many wounded and dead bodies he helped carry after the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival.
Many of his memories are mere silhouettes. Sometimes he can only remember people’s wounds and not their faces.
Others he cannot forget: the Latina woman who he and others carried to the makeshift triage area on a trash bin, or the young man leaning against a truck with a gunshot wound to his chest.
SURVIVORS ▶ A12-13
Why? Investigators had yet to determine what drove the Mandalay Bay gunman to open fire on innocent concertgoers the night of Oct. 1
“I think there needs to be some closure for myself, for the Police Department and the public,” the sheriff said at the time. Yet two months after the shooting, many questions remain.
together that night at the venue.”
“Of course, we’ve been heartbroken,” he continues. “Amid all of this is our family and friends and people who live here in Vegas. One of my best friends is a bartender who was there at the time. He’s still trying to recover over what he saw that night, what he went through. It hits home on a million different levels. So we wanted be a part of something to make a direct impact to help the victims and their families with the devastation.”
To this end, they reached out to their manager, Mac Reynolds, Dan’s brother, the morning after the tragedy.
“We said, ‘We want to do something. We want to do a benefit concert of some sort,’ ” Reynolds says. “My other brother (Robert Reynolds) manages The Killers, and he said that they wanted to do something. It kind of started there.”
It’s culminating with the Vegas Strong Benefit Concert, taking place at 7:30 p.m. Friday at T-mobile Arena, where Imagine Dragons and The Killers will team up with a variety of Vegas performers and local notables, including Boyz II Men, Bryce Harper, Cirque du Soleil, David Copperfield, Jay Leno and Penn & Teller, with proceeds going to the Las Vegas Victims’ Fund.
When working on the lineup, Reynolds and company had a specific aim: Make the show feel like Vegas.
“There are obviously artists we could have gotten from all over who I’m sure would have loved to take part in this,” Reynolds says, “but we were very adamant that it was by Vegas, for Vegas, that the focus was on this city, the people that love and know this city.”
People such as Leno, who has performed here regularly for years and who was eager to join the roster of performers to aid those impacted by the massacre.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Leno says of the events of Oct. 1, “but the one part that does make sense is that we can help people, raise some money, honor those that either gave the ultimate sacrifice or were wounded helping other people. I
think for most people in show business it’s an honor to be asked to do something like this.”
As Leno points out, the worst of times have a way of bringing out the best in people.
“Everything now is so self-centered, everybody has one issue — they hate this candidate, they love this candidate — so as terrible as these things are, for one brief moment, people forget all that stuff and they help one another,” he says. “The acts of heroism you saw — I read all these wonderful things people did, you go, ‘Can we get a few more of these stories please?’ I think every now and then we all need to do stuff to show that we care about other people.”
None of this lost on Reynolds, who just got back in town upon completing the most recent leg of Imagine Dragons’ “Evolve” tour Nov. 16.
He feels the sadness, but he also feels the strength.
“There’s a feeling of obvious somberness in the city, but there’s also a feeling of unity,” he says. “It feels like everybody’s a little closer, a little more unified. For a city that I’ve always felt has a strong community, it’s been really a beautiful thing to feel this sense of camaraderie and love and support. I’m trying to focus on that.”
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702383-0476. Follow @Jasonbracelin on Twitter.