'People shot all around us.' Modesto couple share experience from Vegas mass killing

A seven-months-pregnant Modesto woman attending a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday night swapped seats with a man who minutes later was hit three times in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Amanda Vanderheiden, whose Facebook page says she's a sous chef at Dust Bowl Brewing Co. in Turlock, posted within hours of the shooting: "People shot all around us, but we made it out. I lost my phone in the chaos but know we are ok. OMG terrible terrible moment."

Monday morning, she put up a second post: "In my life I have encountered many forms of evil. Just when i thought I had seen it all, last night rings in loud and clear. So many wounded and scared. My heart goes out to those that were not as fortunate to make it out as we were. To those that were wounded I am truly sorry we could not do more. RIP ... we will never forget."

William Vanderheiden shared his and his wife's experience with radio station KAT Country 103 on Monday morning.

The couple were listening to festival headliner Jason Aldean sing "Any Old Barstool" when they heard a "pop pop pop pop pop." They thought it might have been fireworks, Vanderheiden said.

Then a second round of pops echoed, and the man Amanda had switched seats with, and who'd taken a photo of the couple, "hit the ground, shot three times," he told KAT Country's DJ Walker.

Vanderheiden said Amanda was in the military, and has been shot. He's former law enforcement and has been shot at, he added. But "there's nothing like this we've ever encountered ... people started running, screaming, people were falling."

But the couple witnessed a lot of good, too, he said. Men were shielding women and children with their bodies. People were tending to the wounded, or picking them up and carrying them out of harm's way.

Amanda, carrying their unborn child, "definitely wasn't ready" to make the run back to their hotel, he said. But she did it.

It would have been about 200 yards in a straight path, Vanderheiden said, but as they went down Las Vegas Boulevard, first responders were steering runners back into the concert venue because on the open path, "people were dropping like flies."

He told KAT Country his hat is off to the first responders, who were running toward the gunfire as so many tried to get away from it. He and his wife escaped the area "pretty quickly," Vanderheiden said, and she's doing well. "We're thankful to be alive."

This story was originally published October 2, 2017 at 11:40 AM with the headline "'People shot all around us.' Modesto couple share experience from Vegas mass killing."