Las Vegas mass shooting survivors reunited with their “Route 91 family” Saturday night at country singer Jason Aldean’s concert in Orange County, California, watching the same artist who was performing onstage the moment shots rang out one year ago.
Some people wore cowboy boots, or custom shirts that read: “We are here to finish what we started”; “country strong”; and “honor 58 / October 1, 2017.”
“We got a lot of our Route 91 family here tonight,” Aldean told the crowd Saturday. “I feel like we got a little unfinished business to take care of, if you know what I’m saying. I think the last time I saw a lot of you guys we got a little cut off.”
On Oct. 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, spraying hundreds of bullets on concertgoers attending the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival. Paddock then turned one of his guns on himself.
Fifty-eight people were killed and hundreds injured in the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.
This weekend Ingrid Canelo and her daughter Renee Canelo were among the survivors reuniting with fellow concertgoers for the first time since the shooting.
At last year’s show, “we were standing together on the left side of the stage, listening to the music, enjoying ourselves,” Renee Canelo told ABC News. “We heard the gunshots start going off and no one was really sure what was it was … then Jason Aldean stopped performing and he ran off the stage … I grabbed my mom and we proceeded to try to get out as soon as possible.”
“When she grabbed my arm and said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ it was that look of sheer terror on her face,” Ingrid Canelo told ABC News.
As the mother and daughter started weaving their way through the crowd, Ingrid Canelo said other concertgoers looked at them as if they were overreacting. The second round of gunshots was when everybody figured out that there was a shooter, and dove to the ground.
“It gives me chills right now even thinking about it,” Ingrid Canelo said.
In the year since, Renee Canelo said she struggled getting back into daily life and took some time off work.
She said it was difficult to be in crowds, and that this reunion is her first concert since the shooting.
“To come back and be at Jason Aldean’s concert, it’s extremely terrifying for me. But my will to fight on and fight for love and support my other survivors and commemorate the 58 people who lost their lives is so much more important and powerful than any kind of fear,” she said.
“We have a Route 91 family,” she said, explaining how other family members and friends can’t relate to what it’s like being shot at. “It’s a bond for life.”
