A Marine veteran commandeered a pickup truck after hearing gunshots at a Las Vegas concert Sunday night to try to save as many lives as possible.
Taylor Winston, 29, and his friends were at the Route 91 Harvest Festival and realized they were under attack when people started to scream and run, according to an interview with The Daily Beast.
A few of their friends suffered injuries as bullets rained down, but Winston and his friend Jenn Lewis were able to dive into the chaos to try and rescue people. Winston and Lewis spotted a truck that still had its keys inside of it, so the pair swiped it and began taking the grievously injured to the hospital.
“Jenn and I luckily found a truck with keys in it and started transporting priority victims to the hospital and made a couple trips and tried to help out the best we could until more ambulances could arrive,” Winston, who served as a sergeant in Iraq, told The Daily Beast.
Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old Nevada resident, began shooting into an open concert crowd Sunday night from his 32nd floor room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. More than 50 people died from the attack and at least 500 suffered from injuries. Police recovered 19 rifles and hundreds of ammunition rounds in the now deceased attacker’s room.
Winston and Lewis were able to take about 24 people to the hospital in a series of trips from the scene of the attack. The pair packed 10 to 15 people in the back of the pickup truck for each trip, choosing the most critically wounded to get to the hospital.
“I was in such a speedy movement I didn’t assess anyone’s faces or anything,” Winston told The Daily Beast. “Just wounds and who was most critical. I was just trying to be efficient and get the most serious critical condition people to the hospital first.”
Winston stopped his trips when he realized that ambulances were at the scene and taking care of the rest of the victims. He drove to Stoney’s country bar, where he parked the car only to come out later and find it gone.
“People needed to get out of there, and we tried the best we could to get as many as could,” Winston said of his actions.
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