Las Vegas Shooting: Heroes Shine In City’s Darkest Hour

LAS VEGAS, NV — Amid the terror Sunday night in Las Vegas, the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, the death toll of 59 might have been higher if not for complete strangers who put the safety of others above their own. Some were medical professionals and cops — folks trained to save lives — but many were ordinary people who say they stepped up simply because that is what decent people do.

When terrible things happen, it’s the helpers whose stories are often lost. We are proud to share a few of them:

Lindsay Padgett and Mark Jay obliged when a stranger hailed them down and said their pickup was needed as a makeshift ambulance. They loaded eight victims in the bed of the truck and four more in the backseat of the cab. Jay threw a young man over his shoulder. He was dead and had no pulse, but Jay carried him anyway. They drove through roadblocks and over curbs to ferry the victims to the hospital.

Heroes? No, the Las Vegas couple told KTNV-TV. They were just doing what good people do in the face of unfathomable tragedy. (For updates on the shooting and daily news from Las Vegas, sign up for the Patch morning newsletter and breaking news alerts.)

The Latest: Survivors Look For Motive Behind Concert Massacre

“I just feel like that’s what you do,” Padgett told the television station. “When people need help, you have to take them to the hospital.”

Their clothes are splattered with the blood of victims, but the stain on the hearts of those who lived through the carnage will be harder to erase.

“You can’t prevent bad things from happening,” Jay told The Washington Post. “I think a lot of people are going to be damaged from this.”

Were Padgett and Jay the ones who got Tom McIntosh to the hospital in time to save his life? McIntosh doesn’t know, but he does have someone to thank.

Before McIntosh was ferried to the hospital in the back of a pickup, Army Reserve-trained emergency medical technician James Lawson adjusted a makeshift tourniquet someone else had put on McIntosh’s leg to stop the bleeding from a gunshot wound.

McIntosh’s pants were already soaked with blood when he made his way over a wall to safety. Without Lawson’s intervention, he “wouldn’t have made it,” McIntosh said during an emotional reunion with Lawson on NBC’s “Today” show Tuesday

Lawson understated his contribution.

“There’s got to be hundreds of stories like this one,” he said.

Indeed, there were.

Addison Short, 18, says she owes her life to a stranger. She was frantically running from the venue when a bullet landed in her leg and felled her. She told her friend to keep running. The good Samaritan used his belt as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, heaved her over his shoulder and carried her to safety.

“The guy who helped me, if he’s watching … I just want to say how grateful I am for basically saving my life,” she told CNN.

Like other helpers who emerged on that terrible night, Jonathan Smith is humble. “I got a few people out of there,” Smith, a 30-year-old copy machine repairman from Orange County, California, told The Washington Post.

A few? It’s more like one life saved for each of his 30 years on Earth, and his heroism nearly cost him his own life. He was shot in the neck while trying to help others, some of them the nine members of his extended family who had gathered at the festival to celebrate a brother’s birthday, but most complete strangers.

Las Vegas Shooting: Here Are The Victims

When the bullets started raining down on the crowd, Smith told his relatives to lock hands and join the stampede of people fleeing the venue. He was looking for three nieces who became separated in the crowd when he saw others, some paralyzed by fright and unable to move, who needed help.

“Active shooter, active shooter!” Smith recalls shouting to no one in particular and everyone in general. “We have to run.”

He and others were crouched behind a row of cars in a parking lot when he stood up and commanded a few young girls who were fully exposed to hit the ground. The bullet that pierced his neck may be with him for a while because doctors were afraid removing it could cause further damage or cost Smith his life.

An off-duty San Diego police officer tried to stop the bleeding while he flagged down passing cars. By then, Smith was struggling to breathe, he told The Post. Most whizzed by, but the driver of a pickup truck stopped, swooped him up and put him in the bed with several other wounded victims.

The off-duty officer on the Las Vegas Strip to enjoy the concert but pressed into service in the chaos, told Smith he would be OK. And he will be. His relatives also made it out safely.

Not all heroes made it out.

Both avid country music fans, registered nurse Sonny Melton and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Heather Gulish Melton of Paris, Tennessee, went to the Route 91 Harvest country music festival to celebrate the first anniversary of their marriage. Melton’s final act of love saved his wife from the assassin’s bullets. As he shielded her body with his, he was fatally shot in the back. On Facebook, his grieving widow wrote she had lost her “true love and knight in shining armor,” WKRN-TV reported.

Stephen Paddock, Las Vegas Mass Shooter, Was Armed To The Teeth

“We heard that he shielded her from the bullets, and that’s what type of person he was, that he would be a selfless person that would sacrifice his safety for someone else’s,” said Tom Gee, the CEO of Henry County Medical Center where both worked. “That sounds very much in character to him.”

And the fate of others remains a question mark.

The man who shielded them from the bullets told Amy McAslin and her friend Krystal Goddard that he didn’t think he would survive his bullet wound, and they still don’t know if he made it after he was carried from the bloody scene on a stretcher.

“A gentleman — I don’t know his name — he completely covered me,” McAslin told CNN. “He covered my face. He said, ‘I’ve got you.’

“Just truly incredible, (a) stranger, jumping over me to protect me.”

The three of them clung together, reassuring one another as the gunfire continued. They ducked under a table, and McAslin, a trained EMT, examined another shooting victim who was bleeding profusely from the neck. The bullet only grazed her and didn’t hit a major artery.

The good Samaritan bled out on McAslin’s shirt. When the paramedics carried their hero from the scene, the two women made a frantic dash to safety.

Gun Control: Will Anything Happen After Vegas Massacre?

“He’s been in my thoughts all day,” McAslin told CNN of the man who shielded her and Goddard. “He’s a truly amazing person for just trying to protect the whole, under, the whole table area where we were.”

An off-duty nurse from Orange County, California, who identified herself only as Vanessa to KTNV-TV, made it to safety, then ran back in to the awful scene to help others.

“I went to three different scenes. The first one was OK. The second one was worse. And by the time I got to the third one, there was just dead bodies,” she said. “There was so many people, just normal citizens, doctors, cops, paramedics, nurses, just off duty. Everyone was just communicating and working together.

“It was completely horrible, but it was absolutely amazing to see all of those people come together.”

For others, the lesson isn’t the rage that must have fueled gunman Stephen Paddock as he unloaded his arsenal of guns from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, but the triumph of love.

Mario Montenayor carried people, living or dead, from the chaotic scene until there was no one left to carry. Then, he remained with police, doing whatever they needed done.

“It’s all about making sure those who are affected have the help they need,” he told the Associated Press at a vigil Monday night at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

He said the first thoughts racing through his head were fueled by anger — wasted emotion later supplanted by love. “Tell everyone you love that you love them every single day,” he said, “because you never know when they might be gone.”

A man lays on top of a woman as others flee the Route 91 Harvest country music festival grounds after gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd in Las Vegas. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)