Country music star Jake Owen, who was on the stage at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas when the deadly shooting began Sunday night, told NBC's "Today" show Monday that the scene seemed more like a movie than real life.
"It got faster and faster, almost like it sounded like it was an automatic rifle," said Owen. "You could hear it ringing off the tops of the rafters of the stage. That's when you saw people fleeing. At that point, everyone on stage just started running everywhere possible. It was pretty chaotic for sure ... It literally was like a movie you've seen before that's not real life."
Owen was standing 50 feet from headliner Jason Aldean and had just taken the stage along with Luke Combs and other artists when he first heard the gunfire.
The lone gunman shooter has been identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, a Las Vegas resident, according to The Associated Press. At least 50 people, including police officers, are dead, and more than 200 were wounded after shots began ringing out while country music star Jason Aldean was performing on stage Sunday night at the music festival.
Officers discovered Paddock on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino across the street from the concert and killed him, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said, identifying the suspect later in the morning during a press conference.
Owen said when he heard the shots, he "just kind of ran like everyone else."
"At one point, I was crouched down behind a cop car with about 20 other people, that were people who had just come to the show," Owen told the "Today" show. "Everyone's asking if everyone's okay. There was blood on people. You can see a couple of folks in the street that looked like they had been shot, lying there."
The gunfire lasted for about 10 minutes, Owen said, describing the scene as "chaos."
He said he eventually made his way back to his touring bus, parked in a crew lot, and hid inside "because you could still hear gunfire."
The star praised first responders for responding quickly, saying they did all they could to get to the scene as quickly as possible to care for victims.
Owen said he was at the show not only to perform, but also to be with friends, one of whom was celebrating a birthday.
"We live this life of not being scared, which I think is great, but this is reality these days. This stuff is really happening," he said. "We were all scared."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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