Ordinary people who acted as heroes during the Las Vegas Shooting (21 Pics)

Survivors of the massacre have told how the number of casualties could have been much higher had it not been for the brave few who risked their lives to tend to the wounded. Bless these people and all that everyone did to help.

29-year-old Taylor Winston was near the righthand side of the stage when the Route 91 shooting began. He managed to flee the scene unharmed along with his friend, Jenn Lewis, and eventually spotted a work truck with keys in the ignition and no apparent owner. Without a second thought, they began seeking out critically wounded people and piling them in. "People needed to get out of there, and we tried the best we could to get as many as we could," Winston told The Daily Beast. They were able to transport around 2 dozen people to the hospital after a squad car escorted them through traffic.

Jonathan Smith was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival to celebrate his brother's 43rd birthday. The copy machine repairman from Orange County, CA, initially thought he was hearing fireworks as Jason Aldean finished his song, but when the country singer ran off the stage, the music stopped, and the lights went out, it was clear what was really happening. In the stampede of fleeing concertgoers that followed, Smith ended up separated from all 9 of his accompanying family members, but still did his best to corral groups of terrified people and usher them to safe hiding places. “Active shooter, active shooter, let’s go! We have to run," he repeatedly shouted. When he stood up to urge a group of young girls to get on the ground, a bullet struck him in the neck. An off-duty San Diego police officer helped to stop his bleeding until help arrived. Though Smith thankfully survived, as did his entire family, he may have to live with a bullet in the side of his neck for the rest of his life, as doctors feared further injury if they tried to displace it. "I would want someone to do the same for me. No one deserves to lose a life coming to a country festival," Smith told Washington Post.

29-year-old Lindsay Padgett thought the loud popping sounds that interrupted Jason Aldean's performance were just part of the show - until people started screaming to 'get on the ground.' "I thought for sure we were all going to die," she told ABC News. When the gunshots briefly subsided, Padgett and her fiance, Mike Jay, fled the scene unharmed and fetched their truck. "We realized there were people everywhere that needed help and on stretchers... People saw that we had a truck, so we said, 'Fine, yeah,' and started to pack everyone in." On their way to the hospital, with 10 people on their backseat, they encountered a stopped ambulance and handed off their most critically injured passengers. They then continued on to bring the rest to the emergency room. "We were ready to go back and get more people, but my cousin called me because they were scared... So we went there to get my cousin and my family."

48-year-old retired teacher Mike Cronk was immediately aware of what was going on when he heard bullets hitting a nearby fence. His senses heightened even further when his 52-year-old best friend, Rob MacIntosh, was shot 3 times. "I saw him there and I wasn't going to leave him," Cronk told ABC News. With the help of some EMTs and ex-military members, he successfully moved Rob under the concert stage, and stabilized him by compressing his wounds with his own shirt. Cronk then went on to help load other injured people into an ambulance, one of whom tragically died in his arms. "It could have been me that got shot. So many people... very thankful right now."

Shared by Jake Beaton of Bakersfield, CA. His father, Jack Beaton, was tragically shot and killed while shielding his wife, Laurie, from the hail of bullets that engulfed the Route 91 Harvest Festival. "He put Laurie on the ground and covered her with his body and he got shot I don't know how many times," Laurie's father, Jerry Cook, told BakersfieldNow. "Laurie was saying he was bleeding through the mouth, bleeding profusely, she knew he was dying. He told her he loved her. Laurie could tell he was slipping. She told him she loved him and she would see him in heaven." Beaton reportedly "never passed up an opportunity to give somebody a hand."

Sonny Melton, a nurse from Big Sandy, Tennessee, was celebrating his first wedding anniversary with his wife, Heather, when the gunshots broke out. Sonny grabbed Heather and began running, shielding her from harm, but was fatally shot in the process. “He saved my life... I felt him get shot in the back," Heather told a Tennessee radio station. She went on to write that she had lost her “true love and knight in shining armor” in a mournful Facebook post. "Sonny was the most kind-hearted, loving man I have ever met. He saved my life and lost his."

"Prayers needed. Lot of people hit. A lot killed," firefighter Steve Keys wrote in an emotional Facebook post. One of the first responders at the scene of the shooting, he was performing CPR on a wounded woman when a bullet grazed his chest and stomach. Despite the fact that he was bleeding, Keys stayed on-site and continued helping whoever he could, and was later picked up by a friend and driven to be treated. "I'm ok. But a lot of people aren't. I am lucky," he further wrote.

Chris Bethel, an Iraq war veteran, was in Las Vegas for an IT conference and staying at the Mandalay Bay Resort when he heard gunshots just 2 floors up from his hotel room. He called the police, not knowing at that point that right above him a man was committing the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, firing a hail of bullets onto a crowd at a nearby country music festival. "I crouched by my front door, in hopes that I might get the opportunity to see the shooter if he ran by and I could identify him," he told CBS News. Bethel's call would later help the police trace the shooter's location, where they found him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Los Angeles fire captain Mark McCurdy was at the Route 91 festival with his wife, Kelly, and her sister, Jessi Preston. When Jessi was shot, McCurdy discreetly carried her to Luxor hotel. McCurdy then went back into the danger zone to see if any more help was needed, and then had an ambulance take Jessi to Sunrise Hospital.

When dozens of rounds of gunfire rained down on a crowd enjoying the final day of a country music festival, one 17-year-old teenager ran into the terror instead of away from it.
"As everyone ran away from the gunshots, I ran toward them, trying to find anybody that I could that was injured, couldn’t walk, wasn’t breathing, wasn’t responding," Bailey Thompson, a 17-year-old training in the Army, told NBC 7.
Thompson dodged bullets coming from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay casino and hotel as he rushed to find wounded victims, loading them into the back of his truck and rushing them to safety.
He used whatever he had on him -- his belt, another person's belt, his shoelaces, his shirt -- to stop bleeding and help victims.
He stacked victims in the bed of his truck and rushed them to the hospital to get medical care.

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/I-Dont-Feel-Like-a-Hero-17-Year-Old-at-Concert-Saves-Dozens-of-Lives-449241123.html

Dawn-Marie Gray and her husband, Kevin Gray, won tickets to the country music festival through a Portland radio station. They were enjoying the Jason Aldean concert Sunday night when bullets began to rain down.

The Grays took cover inside a VIP area. They stayed there until the gunfire stopped.

“When we came out it was horrific,” Dawn-Marie said. “A field of bodies.”

Having worked as a paramedic for almost seven years, Dawn-Marie knew the local paramedics could not move in until it was safe to do so. She and her husband turned their attention to the injured.

“Providing CPR, providing tourniquets, holding pressure,” she said.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/10/03/4-inspiring-acts-heroism-during-las-vegas-shooting/728324001/

Carly Krygier and her daughter Blayke were in a seated area near the back of the audience at the Route 91 Harvest festival. When she heard "get down," she knew they were in danger.

"I put the baby on the ground and got on top of her," Krygier told CNN. "And when we heard a little break, we ran to the bleachers that were just behind us and I tried to tuck her in close to the end so she was as protected as possible."

https://patch.com/nevada/lasvegas/las-vegas-shooting-mom-tells-how-she-protected-young-daughter-video

Brad Sugars, 46, business coach from Las Vegas:

“I stayed with the police and handed out first-aid kits… People were helping people. A girl was wrapping a guy’s thumb and another person was bandaging a wounded leg. Everyone was trying to help — off-duty cops, SWAT (teams). I saw police running towards the bodies. God bless them.”

http://people.com/crime/las-vegas-shooting-heroic-actions-night-of-terror/

Bryan Hopkins said he attempted to lead a group to a fence that he recalled seeing. “We see an ice chest — it’s a trailer — and we open up the doors and just start helping people up inside this trailer, which happened to be a freezer,” he said. “There must have been, I don’t know, 23 to 30 of us inside this freezer.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/las-vegas-massacre-witness-facebook-11278455

Rob Ledbetter's battlefield instincts kicked in quickly as bullets rained overhead.

The 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran who served as a sniper in Iraq immediately began tending to the wounded. Thanks to a man who took the flannel shirt off his back, Ledbetter says he put a makeshift tourniquet on a wounded teenage girl, whose face was covered with blood.

"Some random guy, I said, 'I need your shirt,'" said Ledbetter, who is now a mortgage broker and a resident of Las Vegas. "He just gave me the flannel off his back."

Ledbetter said he compressed someone else's shoulder wound, and he fashioned a bandage for a man whose leg was shot through by a bullet.

"There was a guy that looked like he had a through and through on his leg, that we just put a T-shirt around and just did a bandanna tie," said Ledbetter, who was outside University Medical Center on Monday, where his brother was being treated for a gunshot that went through his arm and into his chest. He is expected to survive.

Ledbetter and others grabbed the injured man, carried him out to Las Vegas Boulevard, put him in the back of a utility truck with five to 10 other people that was headed to the hospital.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/10/03/las-vegas-shooting-survivors/

A Las Vegas bartender held the hand of a young Canadian man as he died and then stayed with him for hours after promising his girlfriend and mother she would not leave his side.

Heather Gooze was being praised Tuesday for her act of compassion toward a stranger in the midst of the carnage at Sunday night's concert on the Las Vegas Strip.

"I would hope somebody would do it for me," Gooze, 43, told CBS This Morning. "I would hope that they wouldn't let me be alone."

Gooze said she was working at the bar at a VIP tent at the Route 91 Harvest Festival when gunfire erupted during the performance of country music star Jason Aldean.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/hes-the-love-of-my-life-amid-vegas-carnage-acts-of-compassion-1758269

Mike McGarry lay atop younger people at the country music concert targeted by a gunman in a nearby hotel.

McGarry told KYW-TV, CBS3 Philadelphia that he did it because, “I’m 53, they’re in their 20s. I lived a decent life so far, I’d rather them live longer than me.”

McGarry didn’t realize he’d been praised nationally because he was on a flight home when Sanders addressed the media. He says his wife, a registered nurse, was more of a hero than him — putting a tourniquet on one of those wounded.

“We’re just trying to help other people. I don’t think I did anything spectacular,” he said.

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2017/10/03/Philadelphia-man-hero-mcgarry-Las-Vegas-shooting-saved-lives/stories/201710030088

He's A Police Officer That Was One Of The First There. This Was The Back Seat Of His Police Care After Having To Put A Woman Inside With Gunshot Wound To The Head

Officer Richard Cole was one of the many police officers responding to the gruesome scene of Sunday's brutal massacre in Las Vegas. His cousin shared the following photos of his squad car and uniform after helping wounded victims, including a woman with a gunshot wound to the head.