Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
LV fire official develops bond with family of shooting victim
STEPS away, he noticed her eyes. There was no question: She was dead. So were dozens of others, scattered throughout the lawn of what had been just hours earlier the final night of the Route 91 Harvest festival.
Now, it was a hellscape. In the cool, early hours of Oct. 2, Clark County Deputy Fire Chief Jon Klassen had been tasked with assessing each victim for conclusive signs of death. After confirmation, he and a forensic specialist logged the time, then moved on to the next body left behind in the chaos. It was difficult, but it had to be done.
There was something about this woman, though, lying about 100 feet from the stage.
She had no obvious wounds. No apparent bleeding. She seemed so peaceful. Lifeless, but looking up at the stars.
“Her eyes were wide open,” Klassen recalled. “Beautiful, blue eyes.”
On that field of matted grass and blood, the chief swallowed the rotten feeling creeping up his esophagus and focused.
He watched as the forensics specialist kneeled down and touched the woman’s jaw, checking for rigor mortis, the stiffening of extremities that happens after death.
As expected, the woman’s jaw refused to give. Instead, a single, small tear dropped out from her eye and slowly slid down her cheek.
“And it was like, I know!” Klassen said. “And I just kind of broke down.”
Holding out hope
Shortly before sunrise on Oct. 2, Robert Patterson hopped in his car and raced toward Las Vegas.
His 16-year-old son sat in the passenger seat, fielding the nonstop phone calls and text messages from friends and family asking about the boy’s mother, Lisa, who had been at the festival with friends.
Robert’s eyes were on the road, but his mind wandered.
She would have texted or called by now, he thought. He heard about the shooting minutes after it happened, and from his home in California, he anxiously waited for his wife to touch base. They had been texting about an hour before the gunshots began.
“Are you having fun I miss u,” Robert, 53, had said.
Quickly, Lisa responded: “Yes.”
“I miss u too,” she added, with a kissing emoji.
In a follow-up text, she said, “Miss you so much.”
But now, after Robert had called and texted her more than 50 times, there was no response.
Maybe someone had grabbed her phone, he hoped. Maybe she dropped it or lost it as she ran for her life.
He had stayed up all night waiting for news until he couldn’t take it anymore, woke his son and headed to Nevada. With hours left to go on the road, he did his best to keep calm.
Music played. His son repeated into the phone: We don’t know, we don’t know.
The father looked down at his speedometer: 105 mph. He couldn’t bring himself to slow down.
Moments later, he spotted red-and-blue lights behind him. He briefly prepared to be pulled over, only to realize that the officer had sped past him, headed toward Las Vegas, too.
On the side of the patrol car, Robert read the words, “Manhattan Beach,” a small, oceanside community near Los Angeles, not far from where Robert and his family lived in Lomita.
“I could tell that he knew what I was doing, and I knew exactly what he was doing,” Robert said. “So I kind of just followed him. And I didn’t care. I could tell that he didn’t care, either.”
For about 150 miles, Robert trailed the officer at 110 mph, the pair hurtling toward more information. Soon, the familiar Strip skyline was visible through their windshields.
Fun with friends
On the afternoon of Oct. 1, Lisa Patterson had considered skipping the last night of Route 91 and heading home. She missed her husband and children.
The mother of three called Robert and ran the idea by him. But he insisted she stay. It’s what she wanted to do, anyway; he could tell by how happy she sounded before hanging up. She was just feeling homesick.
Lisa, 46, was a huge country music fan. Over the years, she had been to several similar country music festivals, like Stagecoach in California.
Robert, her husband of 20 years and her best friend for even longer, loves country music, too. But the idea of being in a huge crowd of people, and in some instances camping overnight, never really appealed to him, he said, laughing.
He liked being at home best, and he trusted his wife. It was healthy for her to enjoy events like Route 91 with her girlfriends. She would be home in no time.
Lisa was excited for Jason Aldean. When the star took the stage, she and her friends were so close they could see his facial expressions.
Together, they sang along and swayed with the crowd until Lisa suddenly dropped.
Her friends thought she fell. But when she didn’t get up, they assumed she had passed out.
They kneeled down to give her some air, only to realize she wasn’t responsive. Panicking, they enlisted strangers to help. Maybe she’d had a heart attack?
That’s when they realized the popping they’d been hearing was gunfire. They didn’t know, but Lisa had been shot in the back of the neck.
Nearby, others began dropping, too, either because they were dodging bullets or because they’d been shot. The shock brewed for a few seconds before the crowd stampeded toward the exits.
Most of Lisa’s friends ran. One managed to hide nearby, and all survived unscathed.
But Lisa was left alone on the field, her lips turning blue as the gunfire continued, her eyes staring up at the sky.
Searching for answers
Robert’s first stop in Las Vegas that morning was University Medical Center. He still hadn’t heard from his wife, but now there was a rumor she may have been treated and placed on a hospital list.
He waited in the lobby with his son for about an hour, frustrated as he watched volunteers pass out food and families reunite with their loved ones. He just wanted an answer, and eventually he got one: Your wife isn’t here, and we can’t help you.
So Robert drove to Valley Hospital Medical Center, where he waited another hour only to be told the same thing.
He went to two more hospitals. Still, no Lisa.
Feeling helpless, and lost, he drove to the Route 91 venue. He noticed the broken Mandalay Bay windows above him, which marked where the gunman had opened fire.
“I was freaked out from that,” he said. “It still freaks me out.”
Ignoring the terror building inside him, Robert pulled over and asked an officer for help. As he waited for an answer, he looked at the Route 91 stage and peeked through the fencing, searching for any sign of Lisa. Nothing. But the barriers made it hard to see.
With fading hope, Robert ended up at the family assistance center in the Las Vegas Convention Center, just east of the Strip. There, he waited until about 8 p.m. with his son, also named Robert, and his 19-year-old daughter, Amber, who’d driven to Las Vegas from Northern Arizona University.
He tried to comfort his children. He wanted so badly to talk to Lisa.
She was 18 when they met — funny, outgoing and positive. Robert was 25. She volunteered at her church often, and Robert shared her strength in faith. They dated for seven years before they married.
The pair rarely went two hours without talking to each other. For Robert, the last 22 hours had felt like ages.
Eventually, Robert was called into a conference room. Neatly organized on a table were Lisa’s purse, phone, ID, cards and lipstick.
“They just told me she had passed away and they