LAS VEGAS — An exhilarating weekend on their first-ever trip to Las Vegas quickly turned to horror for Iolans Toby and Ashley Shaughnessy.
The Shaughnessys were just blocks away Sunday evening when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire from a 32nd floor hotel room, spraying a fusillade into a crowded music festival below.
The attack, in which 59 died and more than 500 were injured, is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
“It’s just surreal,” Toby Shaughnessy told the Register in a telephone interview Monday. “We went from having a good time to running for our lives in a moment.”
The Shaughnessys are in Las Vegas this week as part of a national meeting of Sam & Louie’s restaurant owners. The meeting was held, as scheduled, Monday morning, he said.
As newcomers to the Vegas scene are wont to do, Toby and Ashley arrived in town Sunday ready to explore.
Through the afternoon and evening, they walked from one end of the Las Vegas strip to the other, stopping by various casinos, shops and other points of interest.
They were just outside their hotel the MGM Grand when the shooting started.
Perhaps quicker than most, Toby surmised the intermittent popping sounds he was hearing was gunfire. His wife suggested it was a helicopter, “but I knew the noise wouldn’t stop suddenly if it was a helicopter,” he said.
The gaps between the bursts of gunfire — usually 30 to 45 seconds — led Toby to suggest it was a gunman reloading his weapons.
“This happened six or seven times at least,” he said. “I lost track.”
Oddly, nobody else in or around the MGM — three blocks from where the shooter was ensconced in the the Mandalay Hotel — seem to be aware of what was going on until a large stream of police cars and ambulances raced past, sirens screaming.
It was a few moments later that the Shaughnessys saw panicked concert-goers fleeing the shooting scene.
MGM officials, made aware of the scenario, ushered the crowd, including the Shaughnessys, inside their doors.
Again, the scene turned surreal, with scores of gamblers and other MGM guests unaware of the attack.
As word quickly spread, and the casino grew more crowded, the Shaughnessys sought a nearby elevator in attempt to reach their room.
“But the MGM Grand is a huge complex,” Toby said, “and the first elevator we found couldn’t even get to our room.”
But with the MGM placed in “lockdown” mode, that mattered little.
“We were among the first people in the elevator, but a bunch of people climbed in,” he recalled, to the point the Shaughessys decided to exit at the first stop — on the 28th floor.
There, they encountered a couple of guests who had opened their hotel door, curious about what had happened.
When informed, the occupants invited the Shaughnessys inside.
“So we sat in there for the next two hours, watching the news,” he said, “and occasionally peeking out the hotel room windows, to see the scene in person.”
“It was very strange,” he said. “We saw the SWAT teams set up a perimeter, and we saw ambulances going to and from the scene.”
After about two hours, and word had spread that the gunman was dead, the hotel lifted its lockdown, and the Shaughnessys returned to their room.
“It was very disturbing,” Toby said.
Iolans narrowly miss carnage
