‘HE SAVED MY LIFE’
Music festival brought together a diverse group
Music festival brought together a diverse group
When the bullets started raining down on the crowd at a Las Vegas country music festival on Sunday, Sonny Melton’s first reaction was to protect his wife.
“He saved my life,” Heather Melton said. “He grabbed me from behind and started running when I felt him get shot in the back.”
Sonny Melton, 29, a registered nurse from Tennessee, was soon pronounced dead, one of 59 people killed during the Route 91 Harvest Festivalon Sunday night. Another 527 were injured.
Dozens of families are going through their own version of agony as Las Vegas officials process the crime scene and notify next of kin.
“It’s a long, laborious process to identify the victims and reunite them with family members to advise them of their situation,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Monday.
A look at some of the victims:
SONNY MELTON
Melton, 29, lived in Big Sandy, Tenn., and was a registered nurse at Henry County Medical Center in Paris, Tenn.
Heather Melton, his wife, is an orthopedic surgeon there, and officials from the center said they will provide counselors to staff who are struggling to deal with this “horrible incident.”
“The thoughts and prayers of the entire HCMC family are with Sonny and Heather’s families,” CEO Thomas Gee, said.
The couple married in June 2016, according to the wedding website The Knot.
On Monday, Heather Melton said she was not yet ready to open up about what she went through.
“I want everyone to know what a kind hearted loving man he was but at this point I can barely breathe,” she wrote to USA TODAY.
ADRIAN MURFITT
For Adrian Murfitt, 35, the music festival was a group celebration after a successful fishing season off the Alaskan coast.
His sister, Shannon Gothard, said Murfitt was every bit the Anchorage native — he played hockey “since he was just a little tot” and would spend months at sea as a commercial fisherman. Gothard said her brother was even talking about going in with a friend to buy their own boat.
That all came to an end Sunday night when a man opened fire and Murfitt was shot in the neck while he stood near the stage. Gothard said the family was reeling, and she struggled to describe the kind of person he was.
“He was my brother, so of course I thought he was an arrogant little cuss,” she said, struggling to laugh. “But only I can say that ’cause he’s my brother. He had this big, jovial, goofy laugh. He’d always try to do the right thing. He had a big heart.”
SANDRA CASEY
Teachers at Manhattan Beach (Calif.) Middle School started their day Monday delivering tragic news to their students: One of
their own died in the Las Vegas shooting.
Sandra Casey, a special education teacher at the school for the past nine years, was among those killed, according to the Manhattan Beach Unified School District.
The school informed students Monday morning and had counselors on call to help students and Casey’s colleagues as they struggled to make sense of her death.
“We lost a spectacular teacher who devoted her life to helping some of our most needy students,” district superintendent Michael Matthews said.
SUSAN SMITH
Within hours of learning about the shooting, visitors started dropping off flowers outside Vista Elementary School, where Susan Smith, 53, was a popular office manager.
“She’s the hub ... really the heart of the school,” said Jake Finch, a spokeswoman for the Simi Valley Unified School District. Smith was an ardent country music fan who was married with two adult children. By Monday morning, the front office at Visa Elementary was filled with redeyed parents and employees broken up over her death.
Crisis teams visited each classroom to share the news in an “age-appropriate way,” Finch said.
JORDAN MCILDOON
McIldoon, 23, of Canada was attending the country music festival with his girlfriend when he was shot and killed.
His parents, Al and Angela McIldoon, told CBC News that he was scheduled to return home Monday night.
“We only had one child,” they told the Canadian broadcast network. “We just don’t know what to do.”