By battlefordsNOW

Local resident ran for her life during Las Vegas massacre

Oct 5, 2017 | 1:00 PM

A North Battleford area woman is lucky to be alive after running for her life during the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

A total of 59 people died and over 500 were injured when a lone gunman fired into the crowd attending a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday, Oct. 1. 

Alethea Demarais had been visiting Vegas with her boyfriend and two friends from Saskatoon hoping to take in the music festival.

Demarais said she was close to the stage near the middle of the audience listening to artist Jason Aldean perform when she started to hear popping sounds.

“We heard a couple of shots go off… I remember looking around and thinking: That’s firecrackers or fireworks,” she said.

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Demarais also thought the popping sound could be a speaker malfunction. But then she noticed people starting to panic.

“We didn’t really know what was going on,” she said.

Eventually, Demarais realized the sound was gunfire, and saw people in the crowd with bloodied clothing. It later came to light that Stephen Paddock had 23 guns in his Mandalay Bay hotel suite, which he tunred into a sniper’s nest.

“We wanted to get out of there, so we started running,” she said. “There were people going underneath fences, climbing fences.”

“We ran. There was a fence half-way down, so we jumped over that,” Demarais added.

“We were running down the road and I remember seeing people injured. People attending to injured people,” she said. “I stopped to see if someone was OK, but there were already other people there.”

All Demarais could think about was her family.

“I thought, I have three kids at home. I’ve got to make it home,” she said.

She added her training as an RCMP constable helped her to stay focused, not panic and keep rational. She helped lead her group away from the firing.

“Everyone was running everywhere. It was scary. It was very scary,” she said.

Demarais and her group eventually made it off the Vegas strip to get to safety.

After returning home to North Battleford on Monday, she said “I don’t think I’ll go to Vegas anytime soon.”

Las Vegas police say Paddock killed himself before he was caught. 

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow