A 21-year-old Victoria man took two bullets and survived in the Las Vegas shootings Sunday night and he's calling his experience a nightmare.
Sheldon Mack, son of former TV anchor Hudson Mack, was hit in the arm and abdomen when a gunman opened fire at the Route 91 Harvest Festival.
"It all just kind of unfolded so quick. I got hit in the gut initially but I didn't really realize at first. And then there was a group of girls who were in a bad way. And then I got nicked again and I was bleeding pretty badly," Mack was speaking from his hospital bed. "I had my friend use his belt as a tunicate and cut off the blood. It all happened crazy fast. It seems not real. It seems like a nightmare."
Mack was in Las Vegas to celebrate his 21st birthday.
He wasn't the only Victorian who experienced the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. 59 people were killed (as of Monday night) and the number of people wounded or injured was 527. Authorities are still trying to determine the motive. The shooter, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, was a retiree with no criminal history. Police found the shooter dead when they stormed the room.
Rick Cohen of Victoria and some friends were attending the Jason Aldean concert at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas last night when the shooting began. Cohen says he heard the shots and saw the muzzle flash, and recognized it as automatic gunfire.
"We could hear the pop, and I could see the muzzle flash at the Mandalay Bay. I could see muzzle flash but I didn't really know where it was coming from because it was far enough away. What probably saved people a lot of people, is they turned off the stage lights so the shooter wouldn't have had as clear a visual, he would have just been randomly spraying."
Cohen and his friends were not injured. "It sounded like fireworks initially, there was just a few pops. And there was a whole bunch of them and it became sort of a rapid fire staccato. I recognized it pretty early because I do shoot, I recognized it as the sound of automatic fire. So I got my girlfriend up and about that time everybody started to scream and run for the exits.
He says many people were hysterical and out of control, and he witnessed some trying to jump into passing cars trying to get away.
Victoria's police chief, Del Manak, was in Las Vegas with his wife attending a Cirque de Soleil performance at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. They were told there was an active shooting and a SWAT team came in and told them to take cover. They were under lockdown for 4.5 hours in the hotel.