Oklahomans in Las Vegas react to chaos
Early Monday, Jacob Devin, of Tulsa, was in his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas when police burst into his room.
At another hotel across town, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett was asleep in his bed, resting up for a speech he was scheduled to give Monday.
Keith and Nikki Edie, of Oklahoma City, were among hundreds of guests at the MGM Grand Las Vegas Hotel & Casino while the hotel was locked down.
Those four were among the many Oklahomans who were in Las Vegas during what officials are describing as the worst mass killing in modern U.S. history.
Jacob Devin
Devin, his mother, sister and brother-in-law, were in their rooms at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino when the shooting began.
“It just kept going; it kept going,” Devin said. It took Devin a moment to process that he was hearing gunshots. The shots sounded like an automatic weapon. The shots were coming from above his head.
Police burst into Devin’s hotel room about midnight. The gunman was already dead when officers entered Devin’s room, he said.
“I held my hands up, thinking they were the gunman,” Devin said. “I put my hands in front of my face, thinking they were going to shoot me.”
When Devin spoke with the Tulsa World on Monday, he was still locked down in his hotel room. From that room, a parking garage barely obscures the scene where hundreds of people were shot and 59 killed. However, early during the shooting, TV had shown the scene.
“I don’t know what
they’ll do to clean up the carnage,” Devin said. “It’s just a disaster.”
Mick Cornett
Reached by telephone Monday morning, Cornett said he had arrived Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas and was staying at a hotel near the airport. He said he went to bed Sunday night before the shooting happened. When he got up Monday morning he found out about it on television.
Cornett was scheduled to speak at the Southern Nevada Strong Conference at the Thomas and Mack Strip View Pavilion at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The meeting was sponsored by the Southern Nevada Regional Transportation Commission. The conference was canceled Monday due to the shooting.
He said he overheard staff members at the hotel talking about someone’s roommate who had not been located.
“A lot of families are going to be affected by this,” said Cornett, who planned to return to
Oklahoma City on Tuesday.
Chad Feuerborn
A Yukon native, Feuerborn, 43, returned to Las Vegas about 10 p.m. Sunday after a weekend trip to visit relatives in Yukon.
Feuerborn said he witnessed chaos while stuck in traffic on Interstate 15 as officers swarmed the area near Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.
“I just got picked up from the airport and we got stopped in traffic for 2 ½ half hours,” Feuerborn said. “People were crazy, and we wound up
having the cops turn us around on the I-15. We were not witnesses, but we were just south of it.”
Feuerborn said there were hundreds of police officers and tactical teams surrounding the area.
“It was just freaky,” he said. “I was watching livestreaming of it and they were saying it’s still going on and to avoid right where we were.”
Keith and Nikki Edie
The Edies, of Oklahoma City, were in Las Vegas to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary when the chaos broke out. They
returned to Oklahoma City on Monday.
After the shooting started, Mandalay Bay Hotel guests were evacuated to the MGM Grand Hotel, where the Edies were staying,
“There was people sleeping everywhere in the MGM,” Keith Edie said. “They were sleeping on the floors everywhere like that.”
He said the hotel remained under lockdown from 11 p.m. Sunday through 4 a.m. Monday, a few hours before his flight to Oklahoma City was set to depart.
“It was shocking. Whenever we left and
took off this morning we saw the hole where he was shooting out of,” Nikki Edie said, referring to the shattered hotel windows from which the suspect fired.
McCarran International Airport was somber as she and her husband waited for their flight, she said.
“There was a lot of people, people camped out, they had blankets, (they) were kind of frightened, didn’t really talk about it,” she said. “Just scary. What do you do? Just pray.”
CONTRIBUTING: TULSA WORLD