Methuen women describe their escape from the Las Vegas concert shooting: ‘It was pandemonium’
At first, they thought the sounds were some sort of fireworks.
Bryanna Giorgio and Mandi Thornton, two friends from Methuen, had traveled to Las Vegas to attend this weekend’s Route 91 Harvest country music festival and were in the crowd Sunday night for a much-anticipated Jason Aldean concert.
In separate interviews with the North Andover-based Eagle Tribune and the Boston Herald, Giorgio and Thornton provided harrowing accounts of how they escaped what is now the deadliest modern mass shooting in U.S. history.
Me and @mandimarie420 are safe. Just keep everyone and Vegas in your thoughts 🙏🏼
— Bryanna Giorgio (@brygiorgio) October 2, 2017
Giorgio told the Eagle Tribune that Aldean was on his fourth song when the shots began ringing out.
“I said, ‘That’s not firecrackers. That’s gunshots.’ And we got down on the ground,” the 25-year-old, who works as a Methuen police dispatcher, recalled Monday morning.
Police say 64-year-old Stephen Paddock had begun spraying bullets down on the uncovered crowd of 22,000 concertgoers from his 32nd-floor room in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. As of Monday afternoon, Paddock had left 59 people dead and more than 500 injured.
“At first we started ducking down and thinking, ‘Is this really happening?'” Thornton told the Herald. The Methuen native, who recently moved to California, recalled Monday that she and Giorgio were on the left side of the stage, opposite from the side closest to the Mandalay Bay Hotel.
However, Thornton said they couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from.
“We could hear it was louder toward the (other) side (of the venue),” Thorton said. “So we were just running around away from the noise. … It just kept coming and coming.”
Aldean and his band ran off stage and the giant concern video screen went dark. The successive shots continued to ring out.
“We could hear the bullets ricocheting off the stage,” Giorgio said.
Both women said the scene became increasingly frantic and chaotic, as everyone tried to flee the tightly corralled space. Thornton told the Herald people began scrambling over barricades or kicking down fences to escape, as others got trampled by the panicked rush.
“It was pandemonium. It was crazy,” Giorgo told the Eagle Tribune.
As they fled the scene and headed toward the Tropicana Hotel, they saw many people wounded.
“We saw people with gunshot wounds in their arms. One kid had (a gunshot wound) in his ribs. He seemed OK, he was running away with us,” Thornton told the Herald. “We saw some people who were not OK.”
The two women fled with others into the Tropicana Hotel and eventually into an America’s Best Value hotel off the strip. Giorgio had fallen and was bleeding from a scrape, according to Thornton, but they were otherwise uninjured. They were ultimately offered a room and stayed at the hotel for several hours until 5:30 a.m., when the area was taken off lockdown.
Police say Paddock killed himself before they were able to enter his room. The retired Nevada native had as many as 10 guns with him, authorities said.
Giorgio and Thornton both said they were able to contact their families as the shooting transpired to let them know they were safe. They got back to their own hotel room early Monday morning, but missed their scheduled flights.
Thornton told the Herald she still has yet to sleep.
“I just felt so anxious,” she said. “Ever since I can’t stop thinking about it.”
