Las Vegas Shooting: Plymouth Man Escapes Rampage

It could have been him. Jamie Garrett of Plymouth could have been among the dead in Las Vegas if not for his decision to skip the Jason Aldean concert.

“I haven’t stopped crying since last night,” Garrett told the Detroit News after arriving back in Michigan Monday at Detroit Metro Airport. “It’s surreal. It was complete chaos.”

Stephen Paddock killed at least 59 people and injured more than 500 others in the deadliest mass shooting in United States history, according to Las Vegas Sheriff Joe Lombardo. Paddock, a 64-year-old Mesquite, Nevada resident, also died.

(For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Plymouth-Canton Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, follow us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Police believe he opened fire Sunday night from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino at a crowd gathered for a music festival. A half-dozen firearms, some high-powered automatic weapons, were recovered from Paddock’s room.

Garrett, 26, was at the Bellagio Resort and Casino when the shooting began, the Detroit News reported. A Twitter notification alerted him to the situation and ran across the street to Caesars Palace, where he was staying.

“All of a sudden, I saw screaming and yelling and there was a herd of people,” Garrett told the newspaper.

It’s unclear if any of the shooting victims were from Michigan. But several people from southeastern Michigan, besides Garrett, were in town.

Detroit resident Angel Hobson was in Las Vegas to celebrate her 21st birthday, according to a WDIV-TV report. "We actually saw people running, so we were just, like, 'Oh my goodness, what's happening?'" Hobson told the television station. "We thought it was just, like, 'Oh, Vegas. Crazy things happen.' But as we got on the plane, they were, like, 'No, we have to hold the plane back. We have to get off the plane.'"

Dan Lock told WDIV-TV he was about 20 yards away from the music stage when the shooting started. He, at first, thought the shooting were firecrackers.

"But it just didn't stop, and when it didn't stop, that's when we saw Jason Aldean get ushered off the stage and people started hitting the ground,” said Lock, 20, of Commerce Township.

Like Hobson, the Noskowiak family was in Las Vegas to celebrate a birthday. Daughter Madysen Noskowiak turned 18 and the Brighton family celebrated all weekend.

Attending the Route 91 Country Music Festival was supposed to be the final stanza of the celebration, but ended up being a nightmare. Gene Noskowiak shielded his daughter from the gunfire, according to a Detroit Free Press report.

The family, thankfully, wasn’t near stage when shooting started. They had decided to sit in bleachers near the back of the outdoor concert venue, the Free Press reported.

“It felt like a lifetime when we were listening to the gunfire,” Lisa Noskowiak told the newspaper. She is Madysen’s mother. “And once we got out, we just took off running.”

Photo by David Becker / Stringer / Getty Images News / Getty Images