Las Vegas shooting witness: 'We were in survival mode'

SA coach tells of escaping high-powered gunfire

SAN ANTONIO – Recalling her harrowing escape as high-powered gunfire rained down on a concert crowd of thousands, Lori Cook, a private softball coach in San Antonio, said she was “in survival mode” as she and her friend, Courtney Simchick, ran for their lives.

“People were shot to the left and right of us. People were trying to carry people. People were crying for help,” Cook said.

Yet before the shooting began, she and Simchick were where they wanted to be, in front of the stage and country star Jason Aldean.

She said only a four-foot aluminum barricade and a walkway for the crew separated them from the performance that had just begun.

That’s when Cook said she heard “tap-tap-tap,” which she instantly recognized as gunfire.

Cook said a few years ago, she was in a Walmart in Waco when two men ran into the store, one firing shots at the other, before running back outside.

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“This was a hundred times more scary,” Cook said.

When the gunfire rapidly escalated, they dove for the ground, one on top of the other.

“You could feel the bullets. You could smell it. You could hear it getting closer,” Cook said.
She said at that point, she was unaware where the shooting was coming from or how many shooters there might be.

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Cook said they considered running away from the stage, but there were thousands of panicked concertgoers behind them.

She said when she saw a woman’s bloody face, she realized, “This is happening.”

Cook said after her friend boosted her over the aluminum barricade, they ran beneath the stage clogged with equipment and wiring for the concert.

She said they managed to get out the opposite end of where they’d been, and crawled beneath a chain link fence that someone was holding up for those trying to get away.

Cook said they wound up in a parking lot where they climbed inside one of Aldean’s production trucks. Left wearing only one shoe, Cook said she and her friend tried using whatever they could find inside the truck to apply tourniquets to the wounded.

She said they went inside another casino and hotel where people were hunkered down, until word spread the shooter was in the area, triggering a stampede.

Somehow, they avoided being trampled and got out, Cook said.

All along the way, she said they saw people flagging down ambulances and doing CPR on victims laying in the streets.

She said she and Simchick stopped to ask people who were by themselves if they were OK.
Once assured they were, Cook said they kept walking.

About two to three blocks from the concert venue, they managed to climb over a concrete wall, then found refuge in someone’s condo along with more than 20 other people.

“Walking down the hall to condo, people were just thrown everywhere. Blood is everywhere. People are just walking wounded,” Cook said.

LISTEN: SA woman recalls harrowing escape from high-powered gunfire in Las Vegas

Cook said the condo’s residents not only opened their doors.

“They gave us towels, water, whatever they had,” she said. “It restored my faith in humanity.”
She said they did it despite one of them having suffered a broken hand and the other who was worried about the fate of a companion who’d been shot.

Although they tried leaving, police outside wouldn’t give them the all clear.

She said they talked among themselves, texted and made calls to loved ones, “We were just, like, what just happened?”

They finally emerged at dawn to the see the aftermath.

“The bodies were covered up. They had to have been people who tried to flee and then bled out,” Cook said.

Cook said she and her friend understand all too well that they could have been among those killed.

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About the Author:

Jessie Degollado has been with KSAT since 1984. She is a general assignments reporter who covers a wide variety of stories. Raised in Laredo and as an anchor/reporter at KRGV in the Rio Grande Valley, Jessie is especially familiar with border and immigration issues. In 2007, Jessie also was inducted into the San Antonio Women's Hall of Fame.