More Inside Whitefish Bay man recounts horrific Las Vegas concert shooting.
WHITEFISH BAY - What should have been a fun Vegas getaway for a Whitefish Bay couple ended in terror, as they ran and ducked for cover during the most-deadly mass shooting in modern American history.
Eric and Danielle Gottlieb arrived in Las Vegas on Sept. 28 to attend the threeday Route 91 Harvest country music festival with two other Wisconsin couples.
On Sunday, the third night of the festival, they were at the Jason Aldean concert when, about six songs into his performance, they heard what they thought were firecrackers. Except Eric Gottlieb had a dreadful feeling that it might be more than firecrackers.
“It had a pop and a hiss sound,” he said. “I’m a hunter, so I know what it sounds like when a shot is fired and it travels for a while without hitting anything.”
Sixty-four-year-old Stephen Paddock was holed up in a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort with 23 guns, firing indiscriminately at the crowd. At least 59 people died, and more than 500 were injured.
Once the music stopped and the sound of gunshots became more clear, Eric and Danielle Gottlieb started running from their position near the bleachers on the right side of the stage.
“It sounded like multiple people were shooting,” he said. “The shots were coming off so fast and furious it was hard to believe it was only one gun.”
Every time they heard a round of bullets, Eric would would push Danielle down and cover her until the gunshots stopped. Then they would get up and run as fast as they could.
“We did that about two or three times,” Eric said. “We wanted to get behind this concrete wall. We kind of thought the shots were coming from Mandalay Bay, so we wanted to get something between us and where the shots were coming from. The concrete wall seemed to be the answer.”
Once they were behind the concrete wall, they were able to look around and could see that several people had been shot. A man next to them had been shot twice, and they were able to persuade him to stay behind the wall instead of making a run for it. They also comforted another girl who was separated from her group and in a state of shock.
Eric texted his father to tell him what was happening. He made it his mission to come home alive to his 13-year-old daughter, Gracie, and his 8-year-old son, Dawson.
The Gottliebs were directed to a lower level of the Tropicana Hotel, where they found about 20 people with gunshot wounds. After helping carry a girl with multiple gunshot wounds to an ambulance, they left to find their friends. Together they took cover with about 20 other people inside a stranger’s hotel room, where they watched the news for about three hours before being told it was safe to come out.
As bad as things were, Gottlieb said, he was heartened to see so many people taking care of each other amid the chaos. He said he witnessed several off-duty first responders treating victims and strangers doing their best to comfort and take care of each other.
Eric returned to work Tuesday. The next morning, he still hadn’t fully decompressed from the traumatic scene.
“There are still triggers for me — hearing a song on the radio or seeing a post on Facebook. It takes me right back there,” he said. “It’s hard to grasp everything you saw and wish you didn’t see.”