STURGIS, Mich. — Both Rachelle DeLong and Olivia Tom spent months planning their big Vegas trip. They started talking about it back in March, bought the tickets to the Route 91 Harvest country music fest over the summer and were excited to see Jason Aldean perform Sunday night. They were a few rows from the stage, close enough to get cell phone video of him. However, minutes into to his fourth song confusion set in they said.
“When the first shots got fired nobody really knew what was going on,” said DeLong during an interview at Great Lakes Coffee and Chocolates in downtown Sturgis. “So it sounded like fireworks.”
Tom, sitting next to her, said the same thing. It sounded like fireworks. No one knew what it was until the second round of gunfire rang out.
“That’s when you saw Jason Aldean run off the stage,” said DeLong. “You could see like the look on his face ‘cause he was on the big screen. He just looked super confused.”
After that, the music cut off, the stage went dark and chaos erupted they said. People shouted ‘Get down, get down, get down.' Everyone ducked. People started running to find cover and helped others get to a safe place.
“When we were down I felt like, I felt super tangled,” said Tom. “Like I couldn’t even tell you where people were. Like one of our friends was directly behind us. I couldn’t even see her when we were ducked down.”
The ladies, both 23-years-old, couldn’t see any of their friends nor Tom’s cousin. Five of them came to the festival that night. DeLong and Tom bolted for the street, they said, looking for them along the way. They hopped over fences and ducked under another just to get the street.
“There's like a semi-truck pulled up to where you had to go under,” said DeLong. “So I went under a semi truck.”
When they made it to a nearby Motel 6, the ladies found the rest of their group. They made sure each one was OK. But then seconds later they ducked again they said.
“There was more gunfire,” said Tom. “We crouched alongside of the building. Then after there we took off.”
The ladies said they remember seeing bodies on the ground when they were running. They didn’t know if they were down because of the gunfire or if they’d been trampled on.
“I fell and when I got up I got blood on my hands but it wasn’t my blood ‘cause I wasn’t bleeding from falling,” said DeLong. “Then when we got to one of the hotels there was a girl like washing blood off ‘cause she had blood all over her shirt.”
At the time-share where they were staying the ladies called home. Tom called her mom around 1:30 in the morning. DeLong spoke to her dad in Indiana. She called him twice earlier that night trying to tell him what happened. However she couldn’t speak she said because she was running and was out of breath.
“It was rough,” said DeLong remembering the third conversation. “I could hear his voice shaking. I could definitely hear fear in his voice that he was really worried that we weren’t going to be okay.”
However, at that time they were safe. Tuesday night, they flew home to Michigan. Tom’s mom picked them up from the airport in Detroit. Both said they were grateful to be back and their hearts go out to the victims and their families. But they’ll never forget what happened in Vegas.
“You hear about these things [happening],” said Tom. “To think that you’re a part of something like that is crazy.”
