WARNING: Disturbing images. Reader discretion is advised.
Martin Sorensen, from Taber, Alta., is recovering after he was shot in the arm at a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday.
He was one of about 22,000 people at the Route 91 Harvest festival when he heard what he thought was the sound of fireworks, until a man dropped beside him. He recalls rushing to the man’s aid and discovering a gunshot wound when he began applying pressure with a shirt.
“I was yelling and I was waving my arm and suddenly I got hit in the arm,” Sorensen said from Las Vegas late Tuesday afternoon. “I got shot in the arm and my arm just kind of, I don’t know, just kind of a blow up of my arm.”
Sorensen’s wife and a stranger wrapped the man’s arm in a belt and dragged him away from the chaos. A man in a pickup truck offered to drive them to a hospital and picked up several others on the way.
“They put in this other one young lady who had been shot and then another lady who had been shot got in as well… so at this point there was at least three or four of us injured in the back of the truck,” he said.
The bullet went straight through his arm, just above his elbow. He was treated in hospital for nine hours and is expected to make a full recovery.
“There was a lot of people much worse off than I was,” he said.
Fifty-nine people were killed and more than 500 were hurt when Stephen Paddock shot at a crowd in Las Vegas from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
It’s the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Sorensen is still in Las Vegas with his wife and another couple from Alberta. They were scheduled to leave on the weekend but decided to book a flight home on Wednesday.