Ammon couple tells story of survival in Vegas concert shooting
An Ammon couple went to Vegas expecting to have a fun weekend filled with music, what actually happened is the last thing they ever expected.
“I was just waiting to get hit in the back, ” Calyn Petersen, an Ammon resident, said. “I could just sense that they were so close. I mean they were within probably a foot of me or even closer, bullets are ricocheting everywhere. I mean it could have easily been me.”
Calyn, her husband Trevor and her father were enjoying the Jason Aldean concert when gunfire erupted.
“We were just basically on our stomachs,” Petersen said. “A girl probably two feet away from us got shot. At that point, we had six of us in our group. We all just got up and ran, kind of hunched over and ran.”
Petersen and her husband ran behind a trailer but still weren’t safe.
“We could hear bullets hitting the trailer and so we decided we needed to go,” Petersen said. “They were just so much. It never stopped for, it felt like, ten minutes, the bullets never stopped.”
They ran, jumping over fences, to get to the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. No one inside knew what was going on until someone yelled there was an active shooter. Then, it was chaos. They found refuge in a stranger’s room and stayed there all night, waiting to feel safe.
“I feel like we’re still kind of numb,” Petersen said. “We’ve definitely felt a lot of emotions initially when it was happening. You definitely realize what’s most important. The only thing I could think about was my family and my kids.”
The Petersen’s were able to come home today. They say they’re still processing what happened.
“You don’t think that you hear about it, and you just think how tragic and terrible that somebody would be so hateful,” Petersen said. “But you just would never ever imagine that that would happen to you.”
The Petersen’s say they actually left all of their belongings in their hotel room at the Mandalay Bay because it was still on lockdown when they left. But, they also say their belongings don’t matter, they just wanted to get home and hug their kids.
