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Saturday, October 1, 2022
On Saturday, those who survived a mass shooting at an outdoor festival in Las Vegas are headed there to mark the shooting’s fifth anniversary. For the fifth straight year, the site of the deadly shooting will mark the anniversary with a candlelight vigil, in remembrance of those slain. The Vegas Strong Resiliency Center also holds yearly 5K and 1M races.
The Harvest Music Festival hosted events in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. The 2017 annual music festival lasted three days, running from Friday, September 29 until Sunday, October 1. On October 1, 2017, a crowd numbering roughly 22,000 people were in attendance. One minute, those 22,000 people were enjoying the splendor of a fun night, and the next minute, feelings of splendor, happiness, and fun were quickly replaced with chaos, panic, and bloodshed. Country singer Jason Aldean had been performing the closing act of the festival just before the gunshots started at 10:05 p.m. Pacific Time. Over the next ten minutes, 60 people were killed, and over 800 more were injured. This is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, surpassing the Orlando nightclub shooting from the previous year. The gunman, later identified as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, was found dead by suicide in a Mandalay Hotel room where he carried out the massacre. Following the shooting, Route 91 Harvest closed indefinitely and has hosted no festival since.
As the anniversary arrives, survivors and witnesses recall hearing loud pops that they originally mistook for fireworks. Nathalie Vanderstay initially believed they were fireworks until she heard the crowd screaming in fear. One couple from Rancho Sante Fe recalls people speculating between fireworks and blown speakers. David Powell and his wife, Erin, are two of the local survivors. They realized the magnitude of the situation when they saw people lying on the ground, and it was then when they, too, lay on the ground. Then, they waited there as they prayed for their lives and waited for the shooting to be over. Today, they, among many other resilient survivors, are opening up about their experience.
“I pretty much laid on top of Erin there, in the aisle, we waited out the eleven minutes while the shooting was happening,” David told 10 News.
Erin described the long-lasting effects of the shooting in her own words. “You have nightmares, you have panic attacks, you can’t make sense of things, your memory isn’t working very well,” she said. To help heal and move forward, the couple has joined Vegas Strong Resiliency Center to receive therapy and to provide therapy for other survivors. The couple has been married for 37 years, and David and Erin have always been united by a common interest in going to concerts. David and Erin will not allow their trauma to define them, nor will they allow it to stop them from attending future concerts.
Nathalie Vanderstay has also expressed gratitude and appreciation for life.
There is now a four-part docuseries, titled 11 Minutes, which details the events of the shooting and celebrates the acts of heroism from positive people, such as the brave police officers who raided and defused the shooter’s room at the Mandalay Hotel.
