LAS VEGAS -- A minister from the Kansas City area was in Las Vegas when a gunman opened fire from a high-rise into a crowd of thousands of concertgoers, killing at least 50 and injuring several hundred more.
Scott Wilson traveled from his KC metro home out to Las Vegas to perform a wedding. He would leave the desert to return home having witnessed and survived the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
“I was on the Vegas strip at the 'Welcome to Las Vegas' sign," said Wilson. "It is right by Mandalay Bay, and you could hear the concert going on."
“All you could hear was people in a big scream. It was just panic. You could hear bullets going on and it was just screaming … it is just hard to explain,” said Wilson.
Police stormed a hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay to find Stephen Craig Paddock, a 64-year-old Nevada man, dead. Investigators believe he killed himself just before they knocked down the door.
Authorities said Paddock was likely a lone gunman, unleashing several volleys of gunfire on a crowd of the more than 20,000 people late Sunday night.
Paddock had more than 10 rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition with him in his perch above the Route 91 Harvest music festival, officials said.
“Where we were, you could see on top of Mandalay Bay, the focus," said Wilson. "At a point, you could tell it was coming from the Mandalay Bay, which we could see clearly.”
Wilson is spending Monday morning praying with victims' families. He says this type of violence should never be tolerated.
“It's horrifying. I don’t know why this is happening. I just wish people would find each other instead of being against each other,” said Wilson. “I did work for the Department of Mental Health back in Missouri, and I try to think what would cause someone to do this."
"I don’t know," he said. "It is very scary.”
Kansas City native Linda Blount watched the aftermath of the shooting unfold from her home in Henderson, Nevada.
"My mom called me at 11 and said, 'turn on the news, there's an active shooter on the strip.' We were just shocked because we just left that area," Blount told 41 Action News in a phone interview.
Blount's family saw a show at the Mandalay Bay hotel and left a little after 9 p.m. because it was a Sunday. Had they stayed, Blount said, they could have been caught up in the chaos.
"Thank god we didn't stay longer," Blount said.
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