Utahns describe the frantic scene inside Las Vegas shooting

LAS VEGAS – During the chaos of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, one Utah woman stepped up to help the people who were hurt.  Meanwhile, other Utahns were trying to help people desperate to come back home.

Riverton resident Kristi Schreiber was at the show with her 14-year old daughter, Brooklyn. When the gunfire broke out, she hovered over her daughter, but, saw others who were hurt.  She says, “We were applying pressure to this guy’s chest wounds.  He had gotten shot three different times.”

(Photo Credit: Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Schreiber and others were able to use a food kiosk as a makeshift gurney to bring that injured man to a fence and put him over it.  She screamed for her daughter and tried to go back to find her, but, she saw someone else who needed help.  Schreiber says, “When I did come out, there was another guy, his name was Ryan, and he was shot right in the liver area.”  She got Ryan and his injured wife into a car so they could get out.

In all the chaos, 14-year old Brooklyn ended up getting separated from Schreiber.  Brooklyn was taken to the Hooters Hotel, and they weren’t able to reunite until six in the morning.  Schreiber says, “I felt like, at that very second, I didn’t have a choice but to help the people that were dying.”

According to the staff at local country music station Z 104, many Utahns made the trip to the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival.  The station even gave a local couple a pair of tickets.  However, after the shooting, the couple desperately wanted to come back to the Beehive State.  Program Director Deb Turpin says, “In the middle of the night, with who knows how many people they saw get killed, wounded and hurt, they were scared and just wanted to get back home.”  So, the station rented a car for the couple to come back.

Turpin says country music fans feel more of a closeness with their favorite artists than fans of other genres of music.  She says this shooting has rocked local country music fans to their core, but, many people remembered the old advice of Mr. Rogers, who said, when scared, look for the helpers.  Turpin says, “People were saying there were a lot of helpers last night, in Vegas.”