Alysha Newman was sitting at a restaurant along the Las Vegas Strip, when she saw some of the first police cars responding to Sunday night’s mass shooting at a country music festival.
“All of a sudden, probably — gosh I’m probably underestimating but — dozens and dozens of cop cars started speeding down the main strip.”
Without realizing the extent of the shooting, the London Olympian said she and her friends decided it was time to get the bill and head back to their nearby hotel which was less than a ten-minute drive from the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.
“It didn’t look too out of the ordinary until you could see worry in people’s faces. People were on phones, and people were all over the place. So we rushed right back to the Aria as quick as possible, and that’s when we got in front of a TV and it was this mass shooting,” she said.
“It just kept escalating, escalating.”
Newman and her friends were kept inside the hotel under lockdown for a couple of hours. From her room’s window, she described the scene in the streets below.
“We could see the whole Vegas Strip, and there was no cars, There was just lights everywhere. Of course you get worried, but I’m was just thankful that we finished dinner in time enough to get into the hotel before they locked it down.”
“You don’t know what to do. You’re like in a panic. You could be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and all you knew was that your hotel was locked down.
Police said Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, opened fire on some 22,000 people before police stormed the hotel room perched above the strip and found the suspect dead.
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