‘Everyone was just stampeding like cattle’: 2 Manitobans shot during Las Vegas attack

Two Manitobans are among the hundreds of people shot after a gunman opened fire on a Las Vegas concert.

Jody Ansell and her friend Jan Lambourne were in Vegas at the Route 91 Harvest Festival when the gunfire broke out. Ansell, from Stonewall, Man., says she was shot in the right arm.

“I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t want to take cover like everyone else so I decided to just run. Everyone was just stampeding like cattle,” she told Global News by phone from the hospital. “There was just more and more shots fired and people were running. It was just crazy.”

Her friend Lambourne from Teulon, Man. was shot in the abdomen. She had surgery to fix her pelvis, which was “destroyed”, according to her friend Brandie Norris, and her small intestine.

“She is doing okay,” Norris said. “She’s in stable condition right now, and her son and her husband are with her now.”

Ansell said she’s shocked by what happened.

“I’ve got road rash all over my body from running, falling, climbing fences. Like it was just whatever you’ve got to do to get out,” she said. “It’s very traumatizing, but all I could think about was my family and getting out. It was terrifying for sure.”

Police confirm at least 58 people are dead and more than 515 injured in the attack when a shooter opened fire from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino just after 10 p.m. local time.

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Country singer Jason Aldean was performing at the end of the three-day music festival when the violence broke out.

Police have released the name of the suspect as 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock. Police believe he killed himself in his hotel room before officers got inside. Officers are searching the hotel room and Paddock’s home in Mesquite, about 140 kilometres from Las Vegas.

Full interview with Jody Ansell:

Winnipegger Stephanie Staples was also in Las Vegas during the shooting and had walked by the site of the shooting about half an hour before the attack started, but didn’t find out about it until she woke up to a number of texts asking if she was alright.

“It was super scary,” Staples said. “Just from the very first one – ‘Are you okay?’ – obviously something had happened, and it was like 6 in the morning when I got that text here – the first text – and my heart was racing.”​

“I couldn’t get onto the internet soon enough to find out what had happened.”​

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