Page 23 - Baby Society Magazine Issue 30

REMEMBERING ... AND FORGETTING, TOO
By Kim Amato, Founder & Board Emeritus / Baby’s Bounty
Caution: This Article Contains Sensitive Content
The day after the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a young woman came to the door of our non-profit looking confused and distraught. She thought she had an appointment with another agency in the same building but had arrived on the wrong day. After blurting out that she had been at the festival, I pulled her inside, and she collapsed into my arms and burst into tears. We sat down, and she recalled the chaos, the blood everywhere, and her fear as she ran for cover as so many shots rang out in that open field for ten long minutes. Gunshots were ringing off the stage rigging and the road cases as people tried frantically to escape. I could barely hold back my own tears as she told me what she had witnessed.
Although newly arrived in Las Vegas, she had gotten a job working security for the festival. During the show, she and several of the crew were charging their cellphones at a nearby 7Eleven that had since been shut down, along with much of Las Vegas Boulevard, as part of the crime scene. She had no way of reaching her family and friends and was worried that they might think she was hurt or killed. The lone shooter fired more than 1,000 rounds, killing sixty people and wounding hundreds more. Many others were injured as over 20,000 concertgoers ran for their lives.
When she finally regained her composure, and we confirmed her appointment date and time for later in the week, I encouraged her to go to the UNLV campus where concert goers and first responders were gathering to give their accounts of what happened and to lend one another support.
Over the course of three days prior to the festival, Mandalay Bay bellmen helped the shooter bring in over twenty suitcases to two rooms on the 32nd floor, filled with twenty-four firearms, including AR- 10 and AR-15 rifles, a large quantity of
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ammunition and high-capacity magazines, all legally purchased in Nevada, California, Texas, and Utah. On the last night of the festival, after breaking his hotel room windows with a hammer, he began firing in bursts at the site about 500 yards away. Additionally, he fired several shots at a jet fuel tank at McCarran Airport over 2,000 feet away but did not ignite it.
There was so much smoke from all the gunfire during his rampage that it triggered the hotel room’s fire alarm. That helped law enforcement locate his room and about an hour after the shooting, as a SWAT Team closed in on him, he was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a Smith & Wesson revolver. A report published in January 2019 by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit said that "there was no single or clear motivating factor" for the shooting.
I found it hard to stop thinking about the horror so many people had experienced, especially the young woman who came to our door. A few days later, when she returned for her appointment, I was in the lobby, and we ran into each other’s arms. She held me tight, and I told her how glad I was to see her again and relieved that she was surrounded by friends. Luckily, they had been reunited and were keeping her close as she got the services she needed. I think of her often and hope she has found some peace after witnessing that terrible night.