Survivor's Tale from the Las Vegas Shooting

Tuesday, 3 October 2017 12:47

Heart FM was able to speak with a woman from Ontario who shared her experience at the Harvest Festival in Las Vegas.

Hospitals in Las Vegas are still overflowing with victims today from the largest mass shooting in American history.

59 people including 3 Canadians died and over 500 people were injured in the chaos on Sunday night at an outdoor country music festival.

Heart FM recently spoke with Liz Heaton from Millbrook Ontario who was at the concert with her boyfriend John. She says they were having a great weekend when Jason Aldean took the stage to close out the Harvest Festival.

"We started hearing a noise and the first couple of times we heard the pops, I thought it was fireworks but John luckily realized what it was right away and panic ensued with thousands upon thousands of people and the screaming started, we just started to run and luckily we made it out of there alive. I only remember bits and pieces, I mean you just go, its a fight or flight type of thing. My boyfriend threw me over a fence, I'm still not sure how he did it and then people just started coming up and over the fence because he was just throwing them over like it was nothing but the gun shots were still happening, there were thousands of shots that were set off."

Heaton says they are feeling lucky to be alive today after making it out of the concert alive.

She notes they had originally had seats in front of the stage where most of the gunfire took place and had only moved further back because they couldn't see the artists. Heaton thinks that switching seats may have saved their lives.

Heaton says she is still shaken up from the incident and has a hard time trying to piece together the chaos.

"I have never seen anything like it, there was just so many police and sirens and fire trucks. Everybody on scene and then all the way down the strip, motorcycles, everybody was yelling and telling everyone where to go and when you weren't around officers, people were just helping each other. People were just sticking together and trying to help."

Heaton says they are trying to process everything.

"I don't think we have wrapped our heads around the fact that... the amount of people that were lost, it hasn't really sunk in yet."