An Australian woman has revealed she survived the Las Vegas massacre after a complete stranger shielded her from gunfire.
Courtney Cooper, 26, from Brisbane, was among the crowd of 22,000 people watching headliner Jason Aldean perform at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Sunday night.
When shooter Stephen Paddock opened fire from his hotel room on the 62nd floor of the Mandalay Bay resort, she thought the noise was fireworks.
As chaos unfolded around her, she was separated from her friend and as she stood by the main stage, a bullet hit a man’s knee just a metre from her – and panic set in.
‘We just dropped behind this little wooden stand and the guy there, a complete stranger, literally jumped on top of me and was shielding me,’ she told the Courier Mail.
Courtney Cooper (pictured) was among the crowd of 22,000 people at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Sunday night when a gunman opened fire
‘There were bullets just going everywhere and there was a guy like a metre away from me who got his knee blown out.’
Ms Cooper said it wasn’t until people were getting shot that she realised what was happening – but still had no idea how many shooters were behind the attack.
Dozens of dead bodies lay around her – and a pause in the gunfire have her and those around her a chance to make a run for the exit.
Ms Cooper described the scene at the open-air Las Vegas Village as ‘absolute chaos’ with ‘blood everywhere.’
She was finally able to flee the carnage and ended up in an apartment with 20 strangers as locals opened up their homes to those seeking shelter.
But she was still desperately trying to contact her friend Aimee, who she’d become separated from.
People scramble for shelter at the Route 91 Harvest Festival after a gunman opened fire
Ms Cooper was near the main stage (left) at the festival in Las Vegas when the attack began
Fortunately, Ms Cooper found out that Aimee had managed to get away in a car and another friend figured out how to reconnect them.
The two friends had planned to go on to visit Nashville, Tennessee, and Austin, Texas, after arriving in Las Vegas last week.
But now, Ms Cooper is cutting her trip across the United States short and is on her way back to Brisbane.
‘We’re going home now, we need to get back on Australian soil.’
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said no Australians were among the 59 people who died or more than 500 who were injured.
But Australians have told of their terror as they found themselves caught up in the worst mass shooting in modern American history.
Guitarist Ben Carey had played with his all-star band Elvis Monroe at the festival and returned to the crowd to watch the rest of the line-up when people started to drop around him.
Ms Kamber (right) and Ms Ratahi (left) had just ordered at the Outback Steakhouse, a five-minute drive from the Mandalay Bay hotel, when the restaurant went into lockdown
Sharon Kamber and her friend, Miss Universe NT finalist Artia Ratahi (pictured together), were dining on the Las Vegas Strip close to the country music festival when the shooting began
He literally ran for his life to escape a sniper’s hail of bullets and broke down a fence to stop a stampede of terrified concertgoers from being crushed to death.
‘The panic set in and we realised we were under machine-gun fire,’ he told CNN.
He watched one man fall. Then two girls to his left.
Then came the stampede as people tried to flee.
‘I had no choice but to go,’ he said.
But the surging crowd ended up in an alleyway, a fence blocking their path.
‘We were pressed up against this fence with the weight of a thousand people coming behind us, all funnelled into this alley. I screamed at the guys next to me: ‘We have to break this fence’.’
Thirty men managed to do just that. Then Mr Carey was running for his life.
‘There were people falling left, right and centre. I didn’t know if they were tripping or if they were shot.
Authorities said 59 people died and 527 people were injured in the mass shooting on Sunday
Shooter Stephen Paddock opened fire through two windows at his 32nd floor room at the Mandalay Bay hotel
‘I ran as fast as I could, left and right, left and right. At this point we thought there were shooters in the ground just spraying people with bullets.’
But Paddock was the only one, firing from a room in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.
Brian Hodge, from the Gold Coast, says he was staying in the room next door, paralysed by the noise, trying to decide if it was safer to stay or flee.
‘It was a machine gun from the room next to me,’ Mr Hodge told News Corp.
In the end he fled, but once on the ground, he believed multiple shooters were on the loose, and hid in bushes for several hours.
‘There were multiple people dead… I was just hiding waiting for police to come get us.’
Sharon Kamber and Artia Ratahi, from Darwin, were dining near the festival when their restaurant was locked down.
‘We were stuck in the restaurant for a good three hours, until about 2am,’ Ms Kamber said.
‘I called my parents… half in tears, telling them I loved them.’
She said rumours of two more shooters swept the area.
‘We were very scared. It was hard not to break down.’
When they were finally able to make the two-minute walk back to their hotel, the scene was eerie and quiet, tense police dotted every few metres.
‘I wasn’t too surprised that something like this was happening, which is saddening to say,’ Ms Kamber said.