Central Oregonians witness Las Vegas chaos, tragedy

People in Central Oregon are also feeling the impact of the mass shooting in Las Vegas. Many locals were there and witnessed the terror first-hand.

Kristy Sinsara of Bend is staying at the MGM Grand, about a mile away from Mandalay Bay, from which the gunman opened fire on a country-music festival late Sunday night.

She said it was complete mayhem. She could hear the gunshots and went outside to see people running for their lives into her hotel to take cover.

“This woman that literally had blood splatter all over her was just shaken up and she was just kind of out of her body, you could tell,” Sinsara said Monday. “And she said, ‘Please get me out of here. Please get me out of here.'”

Down the Las Vegas Strip, at Paris Las Vegas, Joy Christiansen, also of Bend, was heading out to dinner with her fiance when people started telling them there was a shooter somewhere nearby.

“As we were walking to the elevator, there was another couple, I can’t even describe their face. They were hiding under chairs, they said, and ran for their lives,” she recalled.

The hotel asked everyone to return to their rooms and stay there. “(The couple was) on the same elevator as us, on the same floor as we were all getting to our rooms, just to get safe,” Christiansen said.

She said she could hear sirens and helicopters throughout the night.

Ashley Barden lives in Arizona now, but grew up in Prineville. She was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival when the gunman opened fire.

She said no one knew what was going on when the shooting started, and most thought it was fireworks or the sound system malfunctioning.

“We didn’t realize until later that (the shooter) was actually shooting from the hotel,” Barden said. “So nobody had any idea, and some people laid down on the ground, thinking they were going to be safe, and then they were just an open target. So it was really bad.”

Barden was part of a group of about 60 that took cover in an airport hangar. She said the group was there for about three hours until the entire area was secured.