Las Vegas Shooting Near Mandalay Bay Casino Kills 58

Fun goers at a Route 91 Harvest Country Music festival at Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas, were attacked by an unknown gunman, who has an automatic weapon, while country singer, Jason Aldean was performing. According to eyewitness, they heard several shots and it seemed like the shooter was shooting from an elevated position. As soon as the shooting started, concert goers tried to take cover, while others panicked and tried to run out of the venue, causing a stampede.
An eyewitness said he saw a woman who was beside him get shot in the head.
The police and Ambulance are now at the scene, taking the wounded to the hospital. The gunman is still at large.
There's a lockdown on the strip right now, while the Police and SWAT conduct searches.
Story still developing..

Witnesses describe the attack

Mark Mullen -- who was staying on the 29th floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel -- told ABC News that when the shots broke out, he was sitting in his room and listening to the concert while doing prep work for a conference scheduled for Monday.

Mullen said he thought the noise was fireworks at first, but when he looked out the window, he couldn't see anything.

"The noise continued, but there were no fireworks, and it quickly became apparent what was happening," he said.

The view from my room on 29. It was very loud. Many rounds. Broken window and an easy target. Pray for victims. #LasVegasShooting pic.twitter.com/hCbY6H5duf

— Mark Mullen (@mmmullen) October 2, 2017

People in the crowd hunkered down as the shots rang out, and begin running again when they stopped, Mullen said. The crowd would then stop again as the gunshots resumed, he said.

From his vantage point, it wasn't clear where the shots were coming from, Mullen said. But his colleagues who were staying on the 32nd floor texted him when they heard the SWAT team arrive, so he knew that something was going on at the hotel, he said.

Mullen said he could see sheriff's officers walking through the hall with guns drawn through the peephole in his hotel room door. He could also see a police helicopter flying very close to the hotel and shining a light near the shooter's room, he said.

Videos filmed by onlookers gave a window into the chaos that ensued as the gunfire rang out, with some thinking that fireworks were going off.

Witness Brian Claypool, who was sitting in a VIP area near the near the stage, said on "Good Morning America" on Monday that after the first round of gunfire, he ran into a little room that he described as a production area.

"The hardest for me was, I saw six young women. They were maybe 20, 22. They were all crying on the ground. I was trying to be calm," Claypool said, appearing emotional. 

"I thought [about] the Orlando shooting," he said of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting that left 49 people dead. "Because we were in this room. We didn’t know where the shooter was. We thought he was going to jump the fence and come in this room and shoot us all... I’m thinking, 'Am I going to die in this room?'"

Claypool said he tried to bring comfort to the young women who were sheltering in the room with him.

"I said to myself, 'These girls aren’t going to die. I’m not going to die,'” he said. “'I need to get home to see my daughter. This is not happening.'"

"Then the shooting stopped," Claypool said, "And I peeked out the front of the door ... police officers scream, ‘Go! Go!’"

Concertgoer Mike Cronk told ABC News that as Aldean was playing, it "kind of sounded like some fireworks going off. I think there was the first kind of volley, and then all of the sudden second volley. My buddy's like, 'I just got hit, you know.' He got hit three times. Then people started diving for the ground.

"It was pretty much chaotic," Cronk continued. "Lots of people got hit."

Cronk said EMTs and ex-military members hunkered down to help his friend and other victims survive. Cronk said he started to staunch his friend's bullet wounds under the direction of a woman who was with them.

Stabilizing his friend as best he could, Cronk said he and four other people tending to the wounded attempted to get to a hospital by hopping into the bed of a pickup truck.

Cronk was beside himself with emotion as he described helping a badly injured man into an ambulance. The man ended up dying in Cronk's arms.

Jasmine Barbusca, a mother of two, told ABC News, "All you heard were just gunshots. And every time the gunshots would come down, you just start getting to the ground. And when they would stop, you get up and you just try to climb the fence again. We finally made it over. We were running through the parking lot; everybody just ran through the streets."

She said she was thinking, "'I got to get out, I’m going to be dead in five seconds.'" 

 

"There were men going over their wives, their girlfriends, to block them," she recalled. "Unfortunately, those men got shot, but I mean, there were lives saved."

Barbusca said she saw one man as he helped many women climb the fence to escape.

"I don’t know who the man was, but there was a man who probably saved a good 20 women’s lives. He was really brave," she said.

Tearing up, she said, "How I did not get shot... by the grace of God. I honestly... we ran. I don’t know."