HOUSTON - DeAnna Harris, her husband and two friends were at the Country Music Festival in Las Vegas when an active shooter opened fire on the crowd.
They are staying in a hotel about 5 minutes away from where the shooting happened and say it helped save their lives.
Harris lived in Houston before the shooting. She just recently moved to Las Vegas to be closer to family.
“When we heard the first pops, Jason Aldean stopped singing,” said Harris. She says Aldean then looked away for a brief second to see what happened but then went back to the microphone. But “not even 10 seconds later they [the shots] started up again,” she said.
“We didn’t think anything of it and then everyone started rushing towards us and then that’s when we knew there’s gunfire, we have to go,” she said. “It was something you wouldn’t expect.”
Harris says they’ve been to Route 91 Harvest festival before and explains it as family setting. “Seeing these parents carrying their children running through these parking lots was awful,” she said.
They were right by an exit and says everyone was running towards them, “the whole time we were running, the shots didn’t stop they just kept going.” Harris says it felt like it lasted 15-20 minutes.
“This whole time, I just kept thinking what is happening all I thought was there has to be multiple gunmen,” she said. “It looked like the shooter was aiming towards the center where everyone was standing."
Everyone is okay now but Harris says the hotel location helped them a lot. “We’re so thankful we were so close and had a hotel room that we could flee to and be safe,” she said.