Las Vegas Shooting: 'Craziest Stuff I've Ever Seen In My Entire Life'

LAS VEGAS, NV — When shots first rang out at a music festival below the Mandalay Bay Hotel — beginning what would become the worst mass shooting in modern American history — witnesses first mistook the gunfire for a glitch in the concert's sound system. The scene soon dissolved into petrifying chaos, as dozens were killed and thousands desperately scattered to escape the barrage of bullets.

“It sounded like something was wrong with the speakers,” William Walker told The Guardian of the initial shots. Country music star Jason Aldean was performing Sunday night at the end of the three-day Route 91 Harvest Festival in front of a crowd of more than 22,000. After the shooting, officials said at least 58 were killed and more than 500 were wounded.

Kodiak Yazzie, 36, said the music stopped temporarily when the first shots began and then started up again before the second round of pops sent the performers ducking for cover and fleeing the stage. (For more information about this story and other Las Vegas news, subscribe to the Las Vegas Patch for breaking news alerts and daily newsletters. For more national news, subscribe to the Across America Patch.)

Watch: Concert Erupts In Chaos After Vegas Massacre

Aldean was in the middle of a song when the shots came rapidly: pop-pop-pop-pop. Video showed Aldean stopping and the crowd getting quiet as if it were unsure of what had happened.

"Once he stopped everyone took it more seriously," Walker said.

When people realized bullets were raining down on them, confusion and terror gripped the crowd.

“We were there enjoying our time, and it was very obvious it was gunfire coming down into the crowd." Jackie Hoffing told The Guardian. “It was hysteria. There were people trampled. We jumped walls, climbed cars, ran for our lives. I’ve never run that hard or been that scared in my whole life.”

Las Vegas Shooting: At Least 58 Dead, More Than 500 Injured In Worst Mass Shooting In U.S. History

Dan Hernandez, reporting for the The Guardian, said Hoffing was still clearly traumatized by the shooting when they spoke, her eyes glassy.

Hours after the shooting, Aldean posted on Instagram that he and his crew were safe and that the shooting was "beyond horrific."

"It hurts my heart that this would happen to anyone who was just coming out to enjoy what should have been a fun night," the country star said.

“Everyone was running,” Gail Davis, who attended the concert, told the New York Times. “You could see people getting shot.”

"It was the craziest stuff I've ever seen in my entire life," Yazzie said. "You could hear that the noise was coming from west of us, from Mandalay Bay. You could see a flash, flash, flash, flash."

Monique Dumas, of British Columbia, Canada, said she was at the concert, six rows from the stage, when she thought she heard a bottle breaking, then a burst of pops that sounded like fireworks.

Couples held hands as they ran through the dirt lot. Faces were etched with shock and confusion, and people wept and screamed. Some were bloodied, and some were carried out by fellow concertgoers. Dozens of ambulances took away the wounded, while some people loaded victims into their cars and drove them to the hospital.

Taylor Benge, who went to the concert with his sister, told CNN that he and his fellow attendees faced an onslaught of hundreds of bullets. He had special praise for his sister, who protected him with her own body. She "threw herself on top of me," he recounted, "and said, 'I love you, Taylor.'"

"Even after an hour and 30 minutes, I didn't know if I was safe," he said.

Mike McGarry, a father at the concert with his kids, provided cover for his children as others trampled him.

“It was crazy — I laid on top of the kids," McGarry told Reuters. "They’re 20. I'm 53. I lived a good life."

His back was covered in footprints from the panicked attendees' attempts to flee the scene, Reuters reported.

Police shut down busy Las Vegas Boulevard, and federal and state authorities converged on the scene. Interstate 15 was briefly closed, and flights at McCarran International Airport were suspended.

"Everyone's dying around me," Jon Cheplak recalled his daughter Alexandria, who was at the shooting, telling him on the phone in an account he gave to CNN. "Everyone's dying. They shot my friend ... I've got to get out of here."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Photo by David Becker/Getty Images