The walls of a shipping container provided shelter for a Surrey couple from a rain of gunfire that came down in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history in Las Vegas on Sunday night.
Patti and Doug Johnston were celebrating the latter’s birthday at the Route 91 Harvest Festival.
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“We were just in front of the VIP bleachers, which in hindsight was what saved us,” Patti said.
She said the metal bleachers protected them from the bullets; they were able to crouch down and flee along the bleachers toward the back of the festival.
Like many others, they thought the gunshots were firecrackers.
“You could see the crowds start to panic and I said, ‘it’s probably OK, it’s probably just firecrackers’ and this girl said ‘no, those people have been shot,'” Patti said.
“And she pointed and there were probably four or five people laying on the ground and we realized this wasn’t really a joke anymore.”
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Doug took action to cover Patti once the reality of the situation sunk in.
He said they tried to go under the bleachers but there were already too many people hiding there. So they waited for the second barrage to stop before they ran to safety.
“We stopped at one bar where they had flipped over the stainless steel tables. Those were all flipped over. And there were people back there. There were people bleeding and screaming and crying,” Patti said.
But they feared they were sitting ducks.
That’s when the couple found a shipping container.
“We thought at least if we hide in there we at least won’t get shot from outside, they’d have to open the door. So we got in there, there were about four people hiding in there and it was full of boxes of toilet paper,” Patti said.
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They started emptying the container so that more people could fit in.
“Two guys held the doors shut and we were like, ‘do not open those doors unless we know for sure we’re safe to open the doors,'” Patti said.
But one of their friends wasn’t as lucky.
Their friends Kevin and Colleen were closer to the stage when the shooting began. Kevin was shot twice.
Doug said his friend and his wife called their children, not knowing whether he would survive.
It was eerily quiet when Doug and Patti left the container.
“You could see the field, and you could see all the people but you couldn’t look… people were bleeding and crying,” Patti said.
The pair found a hotel where Patti stayed with an older couple who invited her in while Doug ran back to help Coleen and Kevin.
Doug said his friend was placed in the back of a cop car to go to hospital along with four other people.
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“One person had a gunshot wound through their hand, somebody had been shot in the elbow, another guy had unfortunately been shot in the head and Kevin held him all the way to the hospital but he didn’t make it,” said Patti.
Patti said they were very grateful to see their two children when they finally arrived back home.
More than 50 people died and hundreds were injured as gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.