Vegas massacre hit close to home

It was a jarring way to start a Monday morning.

My wife woke me at the start of this past week to let me know there had been a horrible shooting in Las Vegas. It didn’t resonate right away, but as I cleared my eyes at 5:30 a.m. and began to catch up on the details, I read the appalling news.

A gunman had opened fired on the Route 91 Harvest Festival country music concert. The death toll and the number of people injured had already climbed several times in the preceding hours. As the morning continued, so did the tragic numbers.

So many dead, so many injured. Who did we know that was at the concert? Were any of our friends injured — or even killed?

Las Vegas was home for almost two decades prior to coming to Clovis. We raised our two daughters there before they headed off to college. Both our sons were born there, staying until their teenage years before we moved this way.

It was tough to fathom that this had all occurred on a stretch of the Las Vegas Strip that we used to frequent while we lived there and several times in trips back there since moving in August 2014.

We soon found out that several of our friends had been at the concert when the shooting began. Thankfully, none of them had been injured. At least one of the dads I know can be deemed a hero, diving on top of other friends’ teenagers who were nearby at the concert.

He later helped them escape to safety. Sadly, a cousin of a member of that group died during the attack — 20-year-old Quintin Robbins. He had graduated from a high school our family was very familiar with and had been enrolled at nearby UNLV.

Later, we learned that at least one of our daughters’ friends — a former volleyball teammate named Karlee Skalla — had been struck in the shoulder with a bullet. She’s recovering and will be OK. A 16-year-old high school basketball player, Nick Campbell, from another nearby school was also hit in the shoulder and the prognosis is good for him as well.

Soon after, we learned that another group of friends had been at the festival on Friday and Saturday, but had opted to stay home on Sunday. Life sometimes works out in mysterious ways.

As more details came out of Vegas over the next few days, we learned that the shooter had scouted other music venues and seemingly had a plan in the works for at least months. He had stockpiled weapons, bringing at least 23 guns with him to the hotel suite at Mandalay Bay.

Police investigators are still trying to figure out the “whys” behind the attack orchestrated by Stephen Paddock, the 64-year-old shooter from a town about an hour outside of the Las Vegas city limits.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Joe Lombardo did hit the nail on the head during one of countless press conferences this week. In a question about motive, he responded that he “couldn’t get into the mind of a psychopath at this point.”

Rob Langrell is the publisher of The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at: [email protected]