How Bartlett couple in middle of Las Vegas shooting escaped unharmed
Jason Aldean was performing on the Las Vegas stage just in front of Elisha Seng of Bartlett when she started looking for someone to take a picture of her with the musician in the background.
What sounded like fireworks was suddenly all around her. And she might have thought it was fireworks if she didn't see the young woman right behind her suddenly clutch her neck, gasp for breath and pull down one of Seng's friends as she fell.
“I just keep seeing the image of her eyes and her mouth gasping for air,” Seng said.
Immediately, Seng's husband, Mike, covered his wife on the ground with his body as shots rang out Sunday night.
“You could hear the bullets hitting the stage and hitting the ground,” she said.
They were caught in the middle of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Fifty-eight people were killed and more than 500 were injured as a gunman fired from the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
Elisha, 46, and Mike, 47, were watching Aldean's performance about 15 people back from the right side of the stage during the last night of the “Route 91 Harvest Festival.” They were with two friends from Chicago and two young women from Oregon they'd met during the three-day music fest.
All of them survived the shooting uninjured.
As shots rang out, the two young women ran immediately, while the Sengs and their Illinois friends took off in different directions minutes later.
Those in the middle of the concert venue had no idea where the bullets were coming from, Seng said, and a gunman on the grounds seemed a likely possibility. They felt like sitting ducks lying on the ground.
Soon running past people and over shoes, purses, bottles and other abandoned items, the Sengs ultimately had to crouch again as another volley began. This time, they sheltered near the entrance to a tent and moved a nearby cooler in front of them.
Elisha Seng said she was later surprised to learn the gunfire had lasted 9 to 11 minutes.
“It seemed like an hour,” she said.
Outside the venue, they found themselves near the crowded Hooters Hotel but kept moving until they reached the MGM Grand and headed directly to the elevators.
“I didn't feel I was safe until we were in somewhere,” she said.
A mother and daughter from Canada who didn't know what had happened were riding the elevator up to their room and the Sengs asked if they could sit on their floor until the all-clear was given for them to make the longer journey to their own hotel.
The mother and daughter agreed and the Sengs remained there for about seven hours, watching events on television and staying in touch with their daughter in Los Angeles.
They left the MGM about 8 a.m. to a very different scene from the last they'd encountered outside.
“Walking out of the hotel, it was just eerie,” Elisha Seng said. “The streets were empty, and you never see the streets empty in Vegas.”
They flew home at 3:30 p.m., several hours later than their originally scheduled morning flight.
Elisha Seng had planned to return to work in Schaumburg on Tuesday, but she gave herself another day to try to recover.
“It's tough to sleep,” she said. “It's tough to think about anything. Watching it on TV makes my stomach turn. My body sometimes shakes.”
Though she's been looking at portraits of those who died, she can't positively identify any of them as the young woman right behind her who was shot.
As for her husband, Mike, he is choosing not to talk about the experience.
Both have been dedicated fans of outdoor music venues. When friends she hadn't talked to recently heard the shooting occurred at a Jason Aldean concert, they automatically reached out in concern the couple had been there.
Even beyond her current shock, Elisha Seng believes the experience may have made some permanent changes to her life and interests.
“I don't see myself going to something like this for a very long time,” she said.
Nevertheless, she said she plans to cherish the three-day wristband she has from the music festival.
“I look at it as that we made it out of there,” Seng said. “It could have been a very different outcome.”
The Sengs were not the only residents of Chicago's suburbs to survive the shooting.
Scott Lee of St. Charles was injured during the shooting. He told WGN-TV he went to the concert with his wife and another couple to celebrate his 50th birthday. They attended all three nights of the music festival.
Lee told WGN the group made it to a parking lot about a block from the venue when his leg started to give out. He reached down when he felt blood. He had been shot in the thigh.
“I tied a tourniquet around my leg. ... Bystanders were there instantly. And they threw myself, and another young lady who had been shot in the chest, in the back of a pickup truck and they took us right to a hospital,” Lee told the station.