Reporters have gathered the first eyewitness accounts of Sunday night’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, and they’re absolutely horrifying.
Gail Davis, talking to CBS This Morning, recalled a police officer shielding her from the gunfire when she was unable to take cover:
On Good Morning America, Bryan Claypool said he believed the gunfire to be fireworks at first. Breaking down in tears, he recalled thinking of the Orlando, Florida, nightclub shooting while sheltering in place. “I’m thinking, am I gonna die in this room?” he said.
Megan Kearney told NBC News that she saw “people just dropping, hundreds of bodies all over the ground” as Paddock opened fire. “It sounded like it was coming from the sky, up above,” she said of the gunfire. “People just kept dropping and dropping, all over the concert, so it was someone that was above and able to kind of, you know, get a full range.”:
But as disturbing as the eyewitness accounts are, they have nothing on footage of the shooting itself. Because the shooting happened at a concert, many of the attendees were filming when Paddock opened fire. Be forewarned: the awfulness of these sounds and images is hard to overstate. One man captured the scene from a window at the Mandalay Bay:
Actor Luke Broadlick was near the stage, and got footage of Jason Aldean abruptly ending his song as the gunfire began:
Russel Bleck posted chaotic footage of himself crawling to cover in some sort of tent at the venue as volley after volley rings out:
Instagram User randy_kindred_girl_ posted outright horrifying footage of concertgoers running in terror from a position with a clear line of sight to the Mandalay Bay:
And Instagram User Vincestagramen caught the same mad dash from a slightly different location:
Finally, ABC News had more footage of terrified concertgoers fleeing as Paddock fired round after round at them:
Not pictured: violent video games, well-regulated militias, or black-on-black violence in Chicago.
