Hot Chip Love 90s Again Phone Fought

Reporting from Las Vegas —

He was running, lungs burning, across the casino floor of the Luxor — leaving his friends behind in a mad, desperate dart toward the massacre.

It's happening again, he thought.

J.C. Monticone had just gotten a text message from his fiancee Sunday night. Information technology was the same two words he'd heard from her on Dec. ii, 2015, when Melissa Castruita was working in San Bernardino at the Inland Regional Middle.

"Active shooter," the text read.

He ran by people gambling and drinking as if the world were normal. It contradicted everything he knew in his caput at that moment. Life and death were happening outside. How could these two worlds exist simultaneously?

Castruita was crouched down in the VIP area almost the stage across the street from Luxor when she texted Monticone. She, her aunt and her cousin had been singing forth with land star Jason Aldean when bullets came pouring down from the 32nd flood of Mandalay Bay some 500 yards abroad.

"I'm so scared!! Do you hear that? They took jason Aldean's off stage," she texted to Monticone.

Castruita used to tell her family that afterwards her work site was shot up by two people in the San Bernardino assault nigh ii years ago, she was the safest person to be around because, well, nobody encounters a 2nd mass shooting.

Her phone rang. It was Monticone. Over the phone he heard more gunshots. Screaming. He reached the doors of the Luxor and realized he could hear gunfire on his own.

"I'yard coming to y'all," he told her.

"No, go up to the room and barricade yourself in," she said.

Monticone saw the tinted glass door open and a man and woman came toward him as he spoke to Castruita.

"They're merely rubber bullets," the man told Monticone in a rote, dazed phonation.

Blood stained the young man's shirt and pants. Monticone thought some shrapnel had hit him, simply wasn't sure. The woman said that he was her son and that his friend had been shot next to him. The friend was probably dead.

Monticone, a 36-year-old paramedic with the South Pasadena Fire Department, carried the young man to a bench with his friend, who had caught up with him after his sprint. He handed the telephone to his friend and tried to help the man. He also needed to get to Castruita. He struggled with what to do. "The hardest determination I've ever had to make in my life," he said.

He told Castruita that he was helping someone and that he would find her. Don't lose your phone, he told her. I volition find y'all.

Then he went to work.

Castruita had been jubilant her 34th birthday, and this was the 2nd Road 91 Harvest festival she attended. She'd seen her favorite land human action, Sam Hunt, Saturday night and was excited to see Aldean's set up.

The tickets were VIP, but after a belatedly night of partying Saturday, they had arrived later than planned and missed out on nabbing seats in the outdoor arena. Her aunt and cousin moved off to the left of the phase and even considered going to the pit area.

It was crowded, though, and e'er since her experience with the San Bernardino shooting, Castruita had been skittish in large crowds.

That solar day in 2015 hung over her and haunted her. She remembered driving to the Inland Regional Centre on December. 2 after the gunfire had started. She remembered the terror of knowing people had been shot and killed at the site where she worked. Helicopters buzzed overhead. Law in tactical gear were everywhere.

A week later that shooting, nobody could go back into the building, and then Castruita and Monticone decided to get to Disneyland. The crowds spooked her, still, and they left.

She was a runner and liked to hitting the streets early in the morning, but Castruita remembered that not long after the San Bernardino shooting she was out running and saw a human being with a hand in his pocket. Did he have a gun? She panicked.

But for this year'south Route 91 Harvest festival, she felt OK and had settled into feeling more at ease. Then came the shots. The police in tactical gear. The helicopters.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times )

She had confidence that Monticone would stay safe. Simply she knew he would be worried about her — just like he was on Dec. 2 when he drove 95 mph on the pike from Santa Clarita to get her in San Bernardino after she told him at that place had been a shooting and the killers were however on the loose.

Castruita wondered whether the killers were all the same on the loose in Las Vegas.

The casino expanse in Luxor had gotten quiet, and the young man in stupor was trembling.

"Shooter!" someone yelled.

Monticone looked upward and saw a few hundred people streaming through the doors. The woman helped her son upwards and started to run and brutal. Monticone thought she might become trampled and helped her upward. Her phone flew, and he saw the caller ID on it said "Husband." He grabbed it for her and then they took off.

When Monticone turned effectually, a shirtless man in a cowboy hat staggered at him. He was haemorrhage profusely above the centre and effectually his mouth. With no first-help equipment, Monticone rushed to the bath to become some towels. Press it confronting the wound to stem the bleeding, he told the injured man. He said he had to notice his fiancee.

Monticone rushed out the Luxor and chosen her again.

Forth with her aunt and cousin, Castruita had helped other concertgoers rip downwardly an aluminum wall of the VIP section to escape toward the Tropicana.

Her phone rang. Monticone was still OK. So was she, she said. He was near the Tropicana, too. They could endeavour to meet at the MGM Grand.

She heard him say he had to go. Another person needed help. They hung up.

Castruita kept moving toward the MGM.

Monticone helped carry a woman with a gunshot wound in her leg to a triage center already fix on Las Vegas Boulevard. He was a paramedic, Monticone said, and got her an Iv before seeing ambulances arriving one after the other.

"I needed to get to Melissa," he recalled saying equally he left the woman with paramedics.

He rushed by some police, into the MGM and started downward an escalator. He wondered how hard it would be to discover her. He chosen her once more. She said she was virtually an escalator at the MGM.

So she saw him coming down the escalator. They hugged only similar they had when he raced from his parents' home in Santa Clarita in 2015.

Monticone'southward wearing apparel, arms and hands were covered with claret. He ducked into the restroom to quickly wash it off when he heard what he thought were gunshots. Castruita had heard them too and instinctively began to run with her aunt and cousin. Only then she stopped and looked for Monticone.

He bolted out of the restroom and saw her. And they escaped.

Together again.

david.montero@latimes.com

Twitter: @davemontero

As well

A brotherly journeying from Alaska to Vegas ends in sorrow

Republicans and NRA shift ground, say they will consider limiting firearm 'crash-land stocks'

How to finish a sniper like Stephen Paddock? Police sharpshooters firing from helicopters is one idea

Mandalay Bay gunman spent two weeks in Las Vegas before killings; researched outdoor concerts in other large cities

mcclellansomet1976.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-las-vegas-firefighter-20171005-story.html