Mass shooting in Las Vegas, 2/10/2017

[stickdog99]

http://www.npr.org/2017/10/04/555710429 ... s-massacre

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Sunday night on the Las Vegas Strip was chaos with people running from the path of bullets. There were also reports of multiple shooters, which turned out to be false. Through it all, emergency responders were trying to save the wounded. One of them was Caitlin Medina. She's a young, advanced EMT who's been doing this for about a year and a half. NPR's Leila Fadel spent the morning with Medina as she returned to her regular shift.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Morning, Ms. Caitlin.

CAITLIN MEDINA: Good morning, Ms. Marla (ph) - oh, you know, just living the dream.

LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Caitlin Medina greets colleagues on her way to her truck at Community Ambulance where she's an advanced EMT. She has on her pink breast cancer awareness shirt, a sparkly headband adorning her blond hair and her usual positive attitude. Her partner, Sarah Derleth, is already inside the truck.

SARAH DERLETH: We need to still wipe everything down because I found remnants of it.

MEDINA: Yeah, we've been going through our trucks, unfortunately. With everything that's happened and - we find blood in random spots in our...

FADEL: You wouldn't know it by looking at her, but 20-year-old Medina is back to work after being a first responder during Sunday's massacre. Laughing with Derleth helps.

MEDINA: (Laughter).

FADEL: She's back to regular days where the calls are about chest pains, stomach aches or maybe one gunshot wound, nothing like what she witnessed this weekend when she arrived at the grounds of the country music festival with an active shooter still out there.

MEDINA: Walking into that seemed absolutely like a horror movie - bodies everywhere, just everywhere.

FADEL: It looked fake, she says. She loaded people into trucks, decided who had a fighting chance and piled them in, sometimes five at a time, to get to the hospital. She was in work mode, she says. But there is one moment that haunts her - a woman lying on the road, wounded.

MEDINA: She unfortunately took a fatal shot to the head but was still alive. And I had to sit there and make that decision on, do I call for help?

FADEL: She knew nothing would save her.

MEDINA: I didn't have the heart to just let her stay there by herself and be alone. And so I sat there with her until she took her last breath.

[Burnt Hill]

Man that's some traumatic shit for people to have to go through.
30,000 people with PTSD.

[SonicG]

Well of course. That's elementary logic because no person in the history of flight ever had a reason other than misanthropy to avoid controlled areas.

Sure this one instance doesn't mean much on its own, but are we starting to see a pattern of misanthropy with Paddock?

Yep...I will admit it plays into both the spook narrative and, what will most likely be settled on as the official "motive", in that he was just a misanthrope...inherited this psycopathic gene from his father...Will the brother still be "visible" then??

[stickdog99]

https://www.protransport-1.com/2017/10/ ... -shooting/

Cori Hennessy dropped to the ground with those around her, fortunate to do so by choice, as thousands of concert attendees came to the sudden realization the pop-pop-pop filling the air in place of country music was gunfire. She waited for the right moment, a pause, and ran for cover under the bleachers alongside her brother and his fiancé. Gunfire streamed down again, now aimed at the bleachers Cori hid under with family. Another pause and they ran for the exit, thousands of others too.

...

“It was kind of crazy, when we were still in the venue I tried to remain calm even though emotions were high,” said Cori, who has also served as an event EMT for VersaCare EMS and is an EMT instructional assistant at Folsom lake College. “Once we were out, my attention just flipped over to the wounded and I did whatever I could to help.”
While assisting a group who had already wrapped a bandana around a victim’s wound, Cori found a second wound on the back of the same victim’s leg. She took her brother’s favorite shirt, tore it, fashioned another makeshift tourniquet, and tied it around the newly discovered wound before carrying the victim to a nearby bench as the first ambulance reached the site, only then handing over care to the first responders and turning her attention to others who were injured.

Additional emergency medical services resources arrived to find many who had escaped the worst of the horrors seeking refuge inside the Tropicana and Hooters resorts across Reno Avenue from the concert site. Cori located a fire captain and volunteered her services. She was paired with two responding paramedics and asked to follow their lead. Over the course of 25 minutes, Cori helped triage the injured, get them into ambulances, and clear out the Hooters resort. Understandably worried about losing track of Cori and being unable to find her again amid the chaos, her family refused to be separated from her and remained by her side.

Cori had done all she could to get the injured the medical attention and care they required when, near midnight, local authorities placed the Tropicana and nearby resorts on lockdown. As part of ongoing security precautions, Cori and her family were ushered upstairs to a conference area with fellow concertgoers who found safe harbor inside the Tropicana. They entered one at a time, were patted down, had their bags searched and were guarded behind locked doors by fully armed police in tactical gear for hours.

[stickdog99]

http://www.miragenews.com/off-duty-las- ... se-people/

An off-duty paramedic who risked death to help the wounded at a mass shooting at a country music festival says he would do it again in a heartbeat.

Kacy Thompson is an emergency medical technician – a paramedic – and was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival country music concert in Las Vegas when Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd from the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel.

More than 400 people were injured and 58 died from the attack, after which Paddock killed himself.

Many people ran, but some stayed even as the bullets were flying – and Mr Thompson was one of them.

He told Checkpoint with John Campbell he was having an “awesome” time at the festival before the shooting started.

“I realised we needed to go when the girl in front of me dropped. And I went up to her to see if she needed help and she was gone, she was shot in the head.”

Once he know his fiancée was safe his training instinct kicked in, he said.

“My brain kicked in and said ‘you know what, these people need help and I’m here to help them’.

“I knew how to treat these people, I knew how to bandage them and stop their bleeding in order to save their lives.

“There was still bullets flying in the background, there was still guns going off and I didn’t even care.”

He said the emergency services were not allowed on the scene while there was still shooting.

So he said he spent the next 1hr45m helping out with a group of other concert goers which included a nurse, a firefighter, as well as his buddy Scott who had no medical background.

“There were people … just getting their hands covered in strangers’ blood, holding wounds, doing CPR, carrying people.

“It was all concert goers doing this. Without the citizens doing this … the casualties would have been a lot more.”

He said he would do it again in a heartbeat.

“I did it for my family, and every one of those people are my family.”

Full interview here: http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/downloads/ ... rt-128.mp3

[stickdog99]

http://www.wfmj.com/story/36522383/herm ... -shootings

A Mercer County paramedic and his wife attended the Las Vegas concert where the deadly shooting took place Sunday.

Corry Fenton says people were getting hit by bullets just six feet away from him as he stood close to the stage. And as he tried to escape, he and his family could feel the dirt hitting them that was getting kicked up by bullets striking the ground.

Fenton, his wife Carol, and his step-daughter were all standing at the catwalk portion of the stage when they thought they heard fireworks.

"I turned to see what was going on and I heard it again and I said those are gunshots! Get down! That's when everybody started yelling they are shot, they're shot!" said Fenton.

They all scrambled to get over a steel fence and then get under the stage for cover, all while bullets whizzed all around them.

"You could actually hear the bullets buzzing above our heads and hitting the steel fence and right beside us," said Fenton.

Did he think this could be the end?

"Absolutely! I thought we were going to be coming home in different means than on our feet," Fenton said.

Corry's paramedic training kicked in and he started to treat shooting victims under the stage. He guesses he treated maybe 50 or 60 people who were shot. Trying to stop the bleeding and keep them breathing, all during the shooting through an hour after.

[stickdog99]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/06/health/la ... index.html

Within minutes, nearly 500 people were wounded. Soon after that, an impromptu fleet of ambulances, private vehicles, taxis, Ubers and Lyfts began scooping them up from the festival site on the Strip and rushing them to nearby hospitals, where besieged emergency rooms became the front lines in a battle to save lives.

"It was organized chaos," said Seiff, 55, who has worked at Sunrise since 2001. As chief of neurosurgery, he had seen all the injuries in the past and smelled the "pungent, metallic" odor of blood.

But nothing like this. Not on this scale. "Everything I saw on Sunday night I've seen before, just not at one time," he said.

Injured people filled the waiting room and hallways. Nurses and doctors frantically scurried to triage patients so the most desperate could be treated first.

Nineteen patients -- all head and spine injuries -- came to Seiff. He and Drs. John Anson, Keith Blum and Gene Khavkin handled 10 head-shot victims and nine spinal injuries. Fifteen of them made it, though one patient will be a quadriplegic, two others paraplegic.

A woman in her 20s had been shot through the eye. The base of her skull was smashed. Another young woman had a bullet wound to her jaw.

Because the shooter had used high-velocity rounds, Chestovich's skill set was in demand. These types of bullets, he said, carry an enormous amount of energy, which is "transmitted to whatever stops the projectile," he said.

Chestovich focused on stopping bleeding, along with the "ABCDE" of trauma care: airway, breathing, circulation, disability and exposure.

But those doctors and physicians aren't the only heroes. Civilians played a crucial role in ferrying the injured to help.

According to witnesses, while some frightened concertgoers refused to stop as they escaped the scene in vehicles, others lined up along the shoulder to take victims to hospitals.

Lindsay Padgett, 29, and fiancée Mark Jay, 37, were among the lucky people to make it out unharmed.

They were exiting a parking lot, gaping as shell-shocked pedestrians meandered through the crowd and people ran by with bodies in wheelbarrows and on police barricades repurposed as gurneys.

A man ran up to their passenger-side window and said, "Right now, we need your truck. We just need to get people over to the hospital, OK?"

Also in the crowd that night were Las Vegas paramedic and firefighter Ben Kole, Clark County fireman Jesse Gomez and Henderson fireman Anthony Robone.

They're among the many first responders who spent their days off at the music festival. Twelve firefighters were shot at the concert, two while performing CPR, said Las Vegas Firefighters Local 1285 President Eric Littmann.

When the bullets began coming down, Robone, 25, covered his girlfriend and told her everything was fine, even though he was not sure that was true. Then he heard his brother, Nick, say, "I got hit," and saw him spit up blood.

[stickdog99]

http://wkbn.com/2017/10/04/mercer-count ... las-vegas/

HERMITAGE, Pa. (WKBN) – An emergency medical technician from Mercer County was in Las Vegas Sunday night when a gunman opened fire on concert goers at a country music festival.

Corry Fenton was in town with his family for an anniversary and birthday celebration when the gunfire rang out. He said he and his family were caught in the crowd and was just a few people away from those first hit and close enough to the stage to be able to hide underneath it.

“You could hear dinging and everyone was yelling they’re hurt, they’re shot. Everybody sort of collapsed and went into a big flat pile,” Fenton said.

Once he got his family to safety, Fenton ran back into danger to help people that were hurt.

“Once I got my wife and step-daughter out around, they posted on Facebook that there was an active shooter situation, and I went back in to help,” Fenton said. “There were hundreds of people injured. I can’t even give you a number, probably 50, 60, 70 people. I made some type of contact and helped move and load into ambulances,” Fenton said.

[stickdog99]

http://bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/ba ... s-shooting

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) — Sean Stevens does not see himself as a hero.

However, the lives of those he saved due to his quick thinking Sunday after a killer opened fire on the crowd at a Las Vegas country music festival would say otherwise.

Sean is an EMT at Adventist Health and a volunteer reserve firefighter for the Bakersfield Fire Department. He was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival with family and friends when bullets began flying.

After alerting those around him to get out of the area, he and a group took shelter by using a rock to bust a window in a nearby building.

He wasn't there for long, and despite the danger he decided to go back and continue help others.

"We were going through and seeing who was actually deceased and not breathing or who was actually still wounded and still breathing ...," said Stevens.

He said just a few weeks earlier, he had gone through an active-shooter training drill at work and was just doing what he felt was right.

"We were using anything and everything to put tourniquet on, rather it was belts, bandannas," said Stevens.

He said he’s currently battling post-traumatic stress, but seeing the way strangers came together to help one another gives him hope.

[stickdog99]

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/C ... 250592.php

An Ygnacio Valley High School grad named James Lawson appeared on live television Tuesday morning to be reunited with a man he saved during the chaos of a horrific shooting at a country concert in Las Vegas on Sunday night.

Lawson, like the stranger he saved, Tom McIntosh, were attending the Route 91 Harvest outdoor country music festival. They were part of a crowd of 22,000 who were watching Jason Aldean when a shooter on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Casino and Hotel began to open fire on the crowd below. When bullets began to fly, McIntosh helped his wife over a wall, but shortly thereafter took a bullet in the leg. He managed to also get himself over the wall, but he was bleeding profusely by then.

"I jumped over the wall and kind of walked trying to get away [but I was] bleeding really bad," he told Today's Savannah Guthrie. "My pants were already soaked and my shoe was full of blood."

James Lawson, fortunately, was nearby. A trained EMT with the Army reserves, Lawson saw that someone had tried but failed to stop McIntosh's bleeding with a belt tourniquet. He adjusted it, and then waited with McIntosh for 10-15 minutes until a "savior in a pickup truck" took them to the hospital.

"I've been in the Army Reserves for over 10 years now. We go through numerous combat lifesaver trainings," Lawson said. "I got EMT certified a while back and never did anything with it until the other night. I didn't go through all that semester for nothing."

[stickdog99]

http://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news ... s-shooting

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - A local man credits his recent EMT training for his ability to help save lives during the shooting in Las Vegas.

Sheriff Search and Rescue member Howie Long and his wife Jennifer helped to treat wounded concert-goers.

"When we got to the emergency room, the nurses were so busy with people in the back with people who were worse off there was nobody in the waiting room that knew what to do, so me and Jennifer kind of took over the waiting room and was saying 'put that there and we need this'" Howie explained.

"Just kind of had a little order in there instead of everybody running around not knowing what to do," Howie said.

He helped treat 31-year-old Rocky Palermo who was shot in his side. While Howie treated him, Jennifer helped by speaking to his parents.

"And then we just continued... if someone came we gave them gloves, whoever wasn't hit was available. I just told them 'put your gloves on and here's some towels," Jennifer said.

[stickdog99]

https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-ems/ar ... -shooting/

LAS VEGAS — Off-duty firefighters from several departments attending the country music festival provided aid to victims in the Las Vegas shooting, according to officials.


Clark County firefighter Jesse Gomez attended the concert with his family. As they were escaping the gunfire, Gomez said he saw a woman bleeding from her head on the ground. He told his wife he had to help.

“She said I had the keys, so I ran back to the car and I handed her the keys and she begged me not to go,” Gomez said. “It was probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made, but she knew I had to go.”

His wife took a victim to the hospital as he took others to the street. Gomez added that he had to convince people reluctant to leave their dead loved ones behind to run for their lives.

COMMANDEERED AMBULANCE

Three off-duty firefighters from the Alameda County Fire Department in California immediately jumped into action to help save lives, according to SFGate.com.

“Located toward the front of the stage, the ACFD firefighters helped triage patients and did what they could to assist the wounded and deceased,” the department said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with our members and their families, and everyone impacted by this horrific tragedy,” the department added.

[stickdog99]

https://knpr.org/knpr/2017-10/emts-thou ... ng-started

Mike Glockner is the special events lead for Community Ambulance.

It's his job to go to concerts and other events and head up the medical tent, which is usually the place people go if they've had a bit too much to drink, or if they've accidentally cut themselves, or if they need sunscreen.

Glockner was in the medical tent at the Route 91 Harvest festival.

As the shots rang out on October 1, his sleepy tent became a war zone medical facility, as hundreds of people ran, crawled or were carried in.

“We were overwhelmed with the number of patients that we had,” he told the KNPR’s State of Nevada.

The tent was equipped with lifesaving equipment but usually, they didn’t need it. Instead, they normally just gave out band-aids or provided a place for people who were overheated to get out of the sun.

Besides the tent, he had six other medical teams stationed around the festival grounds.

He said he was part of the medical tent staff at last year’s festival as well, “it’s normally a really good time,” he added.

Glockner said he, other medical staff and Metro Police officers in the tent knew almost immediately it wasn’t fireworks, which is what many people in the crowd believed it was.

“That doesn’t sound like fireworks. It sounded too close,” Glockner recalled thinking.

He immediately got on his radio and tried to get in touch with his crews: “’active shooter, shelter in place. Radio check. Let’s get a roll call’ and nobody answered,” he recalled.

Glockner said he headed out to where he knew his crews were stationed but was pulled back by his operation manager in the tent. His manager knew he was going to be needed there.

“And before I knew it, the tent was full,” he said.

He said off-duty members of his team immediately started to help.

“Thankful they did because if they didn’t I think we would have been overwhelmed because they took over,” he said. “We had our EMS training officer. She’s actually an RN. She took over the triage. She took the brunt of the hit, which is I believe is the worst is to tell somebody that we can’t help them because they’re already gone.”

Glockner said because they were in triage mode they had to start by checking for a pulse. If there was no pulse, they would have to move onto another person who did have a pulse and that they could at least try to save.

“That was the hardest part when you have to tell someone that you can’t help them anymore,” he said, “Everybody was looking to us for help and we tried to help as many people as we could.”

He said one woman he was helping had a gaping wound to her face but when he checked her lungs he also heard a chest wound. When he started to patch up the lung wound first, the injured woman’s husband started yelling him at him about the gunshot wound to her face.

Glockner had to explain to him that the lung wound was there and much more serious.

“In a situation like that you have to certain things first,” he said.

Glockner said they got help from all kinds of people - nurses, doctors, and medics - who just ran into the tent and offered help.

“Overall, the amount that our crew did, what our off-duty crew did and what the public did will always be with me. I’m so grateful and so impressed with the humanity.”

They used just about anything to create tourniquets to stop the bleeding - belts, ripped up sheets, and even a stethoscope were all used.

In the midst of the chaos, the registered nurse who took over the triage told Glockner they needed more supplies. She told him to run to the ambulances across the street from the tent. Because the tent was so full of people, Glockner wasn’t able to walk through the front doors. So instead, he busted through the tent wall to get to ambulances and bring back desperately needed supplies.

He believes that’s when he got a cut on his head, but he’s not sure. It wasn’t until later that Glockner took a moment to look at himself.

[stickdog99]

https://www.realnews24.com/here-are-som ... -shooting/

Steve Keys was one of the first responders to the horrific shooting and he truly put his life on the line to save others. Rather than follow the crowd running away from danger, he ran straight in and tried to save those that he could. In the process of giving CPR to a wounded woman, Keys was suddenly shot. The bullet grazed his chest and stomach, and later Keys told a friend, “Yeah, I got shot. I’ll be fine.” Instead of heading off to have his wound attended to, he continued performing CPR on the woman. Afterwards, he moved onto the street to help others make it to safety. He was eventually picked up by a friend, who was caught up in the attack as well and had seen that he was bleeding.

[km artlu]

Sure this one instance doesn't mean much on its own, but are we starting to see a pattern of misanthropy with Paddock?

Interesting that you mention that BH. I've come across perfectly opposing reports in that regard. Most of the opinions quoted are that Paddock was surly, rude, and very unpleasant to be around. But a few others have said that he was warm and caring, with a delightful sense of humor. How about that?

The positive opinion I most can recall was that of a former employee who was incredulous that he would be capable of the carnage he's accused of. She said that for years after their working relationship ended he would check in with her to be sure she was okay. She was in tears as she spoke of what a kind person he had been to her.