‘It didn’t feel like real life’: Students caught in Las Vegas shooting share stories

What was supposed to be a night of country music and dancing quickly turned into chaos and horror.

First, it sounded like firecrackers. Then, there was confusion. Some fell to the ground, while others sprinted as fast as they could – anywhere they could.

For some Chapman students and alumni who attended the Route 91 Harvest festival Oct. 1, being in the middle of the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history was a nightmare.

It was every man for himself, said junior public relations and advertising major Frieda Freeman, who attended the concert.

“We ran into this woman who I thought at first was helping us. She said ‘Come over here! What are you doing? Get down!’ Then I realized that she wasn’t trying to help,” Freeman said. “She wanted to use us as shields.”

Junior public relations and advertising major Frieda Freeman, right, attended the Route 91 Harvest festival with her sister, ’15 alumna Leah Freeman, left. A shooter unleashed gunfire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, pictured behind the sisters, shortly after 10 p.m. Oct. 1. Photo courtesy of Frieda Freeman

58 people were killed and nearly 500 were injured when a shooter unleashed gunfire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino shortly after 10 p.m. One of the injured included first-year Chapman law student Ariel Romero, who was shot in the face and is recovering from jaw surgery, Dean of Students Jerry Price told The Panther Oct. 8.
Freeman and her sister Leah, a ’15 Chapman alumna, were lucky to escape the middle of the concert venue unscathed, Freeman said.

“I knew right away that it was gunshots. I looked at my sister and we just started running. We were getting separated because people were so frantic, so we grabbed each other’s hands and just ran as fast as we could,” Freeman said. “I’ve never run so fast in my entire life.”

Myles Nelson, a ‘15 alumnus who was near the middle of the music festival’s venue, said that after the third round of gunshots, he and his friends jumped over crowd-control barriers and didn’t stop running until they reached their hotel, Desert Rose Resort, which was about half a mile away from the concert. Some people were still on the ground, and some were trying to find places to hide, Nelson said.

“We just didn’t know what was going to happen the next second,” Nelson said. “You were running, but you weren’t sure if you were running in the right direction or into more trouble. I didn’t know (if I was) gonna make it another step before I got shot, (if I was) gonna get shot. I was just running.”

It was hard to tell what to do during the gunfire, Freeman said. Running away was pure instinct.

Graphic by Emma Stessman and Sabrina Santoro

“We didn’t know who to trust, who to listen to, where to go. We didn’t know if other people were in on it,” Freeman said. “That was the hardest part. We didn’t know if anywhere we were going to go would be safe.”

Madi Moynihan, a senior theatre major who was at the concert with her family and friends, was on the left side of the venue, opposite of where shots were fired, during the concert.

“It was complete chaos and the whole venue was surrounded by this tall chain-link fence and there was only one exit at the back of the venue,” Moynihan said. “People were trying to hop the fence, which was probably eight feet tall.”

Moynihan said her mom broke her foot when another concertgoer, who was trying to help, pushed her.

“Someone just launched her over to help but she wasn’t ready to make an eight-foot landing in wedges,” Moynihan said.

From left: ‘16 alumna Lily Rice, senior theatre major Madi Moynihan, Sarah Rosenthal and Claire Jacobson, front, attended the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas Oct. 1. Photo courtesy of Madi Moynihan

Nelson said he and his friends had originally planned to stay in Las Vegas until the afternoon of Oct. 2, but ended up leaving early that morning instead.

“We weren’t gonna leave until lunchtime, or whenever we’d wake up from a three-day binge of drinking and music, and leave at our own pace,” Nelson said.

But after the shooting, he and his friends wanted to leave as soon as police said it was safe, around 1:30 a.m., but didn’t think they could safely make the drive back to Orange County, Nelson said.

“We (couldn’t) consciously drive at that moment in time so we (couldn’t) go anywhere. It was not an easy decision,” Nelson said. “We did not want to be in Vegas for a second longer than we had to be because it was so terrifying.”

Nelson said witnessing something as tragic as a mass shooting has provided him with new understandings.

Myles Nelson, a 15 Chapman alumnus, captured Jason Aldeans final song before the shooting began Oct. 1.

“Remember that the tragedy affected real people,” Nelson said. “It’s a very big, very national, very widespread tragedy and don’t forget that those were real people who were running, and who were being shot at and who are most likely going to have some form of (post-traumatic stress disorder) or trauma. People who are going to walk out at the mall and not feel safe. Just remember these were real people.”

Freeman said returning to school after the weekend and adjusting back to normal day-to-day life has been difficult.

“Before I went to the concert, I was so worried about what I was going to wear there and what we were going to do once we got to Vegas and all that stuff,” Freeman said. “Right now, all that stuff just seems unimportant.”

Freeman said she felt her professors at Chapman haven’t been understanding of what happened and said that one lacked “compassion” when she left a class early to see a counselor.

“I am trying to process everything, yet I have to worry about my education over my well-being,” Freeman said. “I haven’t even had the chance to just hug my parents, because I am more worried about staying at school and not getting behind. Instead of dealing with this in a healthy way, I’m going to different Chapman offices just asking for help.”

Moynihan said Oct. 4 was her first full day back to classes after the shooting.

“Emotionally, it was hard,” Moynihan said. “I’m taking a Holocaust history class and they played a video that had a bunch of gunshots in it and that was really hard and I almost had to walk out of class.”

Freeman said she never expected to experience anything like what she did in Las Vegas Oct. 1.

“It felt like we were in a dream. It didn’t feel like real life,” Freeman said. “You see all this stuff, you hear it on the news, you hear all these tragedies and you think about how terrible it is, but you just never think it will happen to you.”

Kate Hoover contributed to this report.