Over 20,000 people converged onto the Las Vegas strip this weekend for the 91 Harvest festival, a 3-day country music festival to enjoy music and fun. But this fun, peaceful event turned horrific on the third and final day of the festival.
As of 10:38am CST Monday morning, 58 people were killed Sunday night when a gunman fired hundreds of bullets into the crowd, police said.
Over 515 others were injured and rushed to hospitals after the mass shooting and stampede at the outdoor concert as one of the main headliners, country music star Jason Aldean, was on stage. This makes it the biggest mass shooting in a public place in modern day America.
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The gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, unleashed bullets from on the unsuspecting crowd from an elevated position on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said.
Lombardo, who stated the massacre started around 10:08 p.m. Sunday (1:08 a.m. ET Monday), also said the death toll could rise, as police were still investigating the scene. Police also said an estimated 406 people were taken to area hospitals after the shooting.
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Jake Owen, a country singer who was on stage with Mr. Aldean when the shooting began, told CNN on Monday that it was like “shooting fish in a barrel from where he was.”
Police said they believe Paddock acted alone. "Right now, we believe it's a sole actor, a lone-wolf-type actor," the sheriff said.
Inside his room, authorities found a numbers of weapons, including 10 rifles, the sheriff said.
"We believe the individual killed himself prior to our entry," Lombardo said.
With hundreds of victims still hospitalized, officials feared the death toll will keep rising.
The sheriff implored the community to donate blood. And before dawn, throngs of donors had already lined up outside a blood bank.
Concertgoers described hearing round after round of gunfire. “Everyone was running, you could see people getting shot,” Gail Davis, one of the witnesses, said. “I’ve never been that scared in my life,” she added. “To have this happen, I can’t wrap my mind around it.”
Previously, the deadliest mass shooting had been an attack at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub that killed 49. Before that, the deadliest shooting in the U.S. was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, in which a student killed 32 people before killing himself.
