Jason Aldean described the panic he felt during the mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas on Oct. 1.
He was on stage when the shots began and initially thought the sound system was malfunctioning, he said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show. Fifty-eight people were killed and hundreds more were injured in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. (RELATED: Jason Aldean Opens ‘SNL’ With Message About The Las Vegas Shooting)
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“Then it happened again and it lasted longer the second time,” Aldean shared. “And so then I was actually kind of getting aggravated. So I looked over at my monitor guys that’s on the side of the stage as if to say ‘What is that?’ and ‘Fix it.'”
“And so when I turned to look my guitar player had run behind me and was telling me to move and my security guy was running on stage telling me to run. … It was so hectic, I mean you just, everybody was scrambling,” he added. “You just didn’t know what was going on. It was just panic, is probably the best way I could describe it.”
“I think everybody just kind of panicked and didn’t really know where to go or what to do, because I mean we’re not in that situation,” he continued. “I mean, I’ve never been in that situation before, and obviously nobody else out there had either. So it was just kind of crazy. Pandemonium.”
“I feel like at the end of the day there’s so much focus on you know, politics and race and all these other things that just, you know, at the end of the day we’re all in this together,” Aldean said. “We spend so much time arguing with each other and not enough time working on the issue that’s really the problem.”