CALGARY – A Calgary family is recounting how close they were to a horrific rampage along the Las Vegas Strip that killed one person and injured at least 35 others.
Mark Vazquez-Mackay arrived in Las Vegas just three days before the incident on a family vacation with his wife Carmen and son Antonio, 14. The trip was planned back in August as a way to celebrate Carmen’s birthday, and the couple was excited for the trip because they hadn’t visited the city in 14 years.
READ MORE: Driver who deliberately plowed into people on Las Vegas Strip identified
Vazquez-Mackay tells Global News they were walking north back to their hotel, The Flamingo, when they realized something was wrong.
“We started to notice a lot of police cruisers and ambulances, fire trucks, all sorts of emergency vehicles, going past us really fast,” Vazquez-Mackay said. “We were about two or three minutes short of where it happened, which is just one block here.”
“It was pretty clear it that it was a major incident, with all the emergency vehicles that responded.”
“All that we could really see were a lot of stretchers.”
Vazquez-Mackay said he and his family easily could have been caught in the middle of the chaos, but had stopped to rest for a few minutes because he had a stomach ache.
Lakeisha Holloway, 24, faces murder charges after authorities said she plowed her Oldsmobile into a sidewalk of tourists Sunday night, killing one person and injuring three dozen others while her 3-year-old daughter sat in the back seat.
READ MORE: Las Vegas suspect was living in car, searching for daughter’s father, police say
Five Canadians were among those injured in the incident, which Las Vegas police believe was a deliberate act.
Vazquez-Mackay said he and his family had travelled all throughout the world including third-world counties, and had never felt threatened.
“The one place that I probably would have thought was the most secure place is the only place where we were sort of close to being victimized,” he said.
Vazquez-Mackay returned to Calgary with his family on Tuesday.
WATCH: A Calgary family is happy to be home after witnessing a mother who deliberately mowed down a crowd of innocent people on the Vegas strip. Gary Bobrovitz reports.
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