Manitoba women wounded but alive in Las Vegas after worst mass shooting in U.S. history

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This article was published 02/10/2017 (2985 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Country music performer Jason Aldean and his band were performing the fourth song of their setlist Sunday night when Jody Ansell and Jan Lambourne of Manitoba heard gunshots.

The friends, attending Route 91 Harvest in Las Vegas, looked at each other. “It sounded like gunshots but we really didn’t think that was possible,” Ansell said Monday morning.

She checked the sky for fireworks. Then Lambourne went down.

“I noticed (Jan) dropped and I went to look at her and then I was shot and I was bleeding quite heavily,” she recalled on the phone from the St. Rose Siena Hospital in Las Vegas.

Ansell, 43, of Stonewall, was hit in her right arm just below the elbow. Lambourne, who is from Inwood and operates a beauty salon in Teulon, was struck in the stomach.

“I started to feel myself going into shock and I just had it in my head I needed to get out,” said Ansell. “I needed to get back to my family, I just kept thinking of my kids and I just took off.”

Ansell ran with the mad throng for the exit while a man toting a machine gun continued firing into the crowd from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, across Las Vegas Boulevard — the Strip — from the outdoor concert venue.

“Everybody was running and dropping,” she said.

She could still hear machine gunfire when she got out of the stadium. The shooting, which started just after 10 p.m. local time, went on for at least 10 minutes.

A family member said Jan Lambourne has had successful surgery and that her husband, Joseph, was on his way to Las Vegas to see her.

Ansell felt lucky to be alive but said she is traumatized. She has entry and exit wounds from the bullet — a CT scan confirmed the bullet exited. X-rays showed no broken bones. Her wound was dressed and she was scheduled to be discharged from hospital later Monday, she said.

The mass shooting is considered the worst in modern American history, with dozens dead and hundreds injured. The gunman, a 64-year-old resident of Mesquite, Nev., is believed to have killed himself as police were about to enter his room.

Ansell has a son, 24, and daughter, 18, and her only thought while getting bruised and scraped trying to get out was seeing them again, she said.

She and Lambourne were in Vegas to attend the three-day country music festival.

There was also another Manitoba connection in Las Vegas. Minutes before the shooting on Sunday night, a CJOB radio host whose show focuses on optimism and positivity had walked by the scene with her husband on their way back to their hotel where they called it a night.

On Monday morning, Stephanie Staples learned that a nightmare took place in Nevada while they slept.

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“I woke up to a bunch of texts from people asking ‘Are you OK?’.” She and her husband were staying at the other end of The Las Vegas strip and were unaware that, while they slept, a shooter on the 32nd floor of a hotel opened fire.

Inside the casinos on Monday, life went on, Staples said.

“At 6:30 a.m., people were drinking and gambling like they don’t have a clue,” said Staples, who recently moved from Winnipeg to Vancouver Island but still has her show on CJOB.

— with files from Carol Sanders

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca