Sarah Baker was getting her youngsters ready for school on Monday when she started getting notifications on her cell phone.
“My phone was blowing up with phone calls and texts, and they were all like, “I’m glad you’re safe” and “thank God you’re home,” Baker said.
At the time, she did not know what prompted the outpouring of messages, but as soon as she could, Baker said she turned on the national news, where she watched in shock and disbelief.
Newscasters reported a gunman in a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay opened fire on a crowd of concert goers, killing 50 and wounding 200 in a hail of bullets that erupted during a Jason Aldean concert in Las Vegas, NV.
“I couldn’t believe it. I’m still in shock right now,” Baker said of the incident that is being called the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Baker said she and a friend visited there Sept. 24 through 29 in what was her first trip to Las Vegas. She said she was invited to go with a neighbor, who traveled there on business. Both women left families at home in Patrick Springs.
From her vantage point in her room on the eighth floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, Baker said she watched as crews set up for the concert. “We could look down at where they were setting up the Jason Aldean concert.”
When her flight departed the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, bound for Charlotte, N.C., Baker said she was able to see whole section of the concert venue from a window seat on the plane. She snapped a photo of it through the window.
“It was scary to see where I left just two days ago was now the scene of a mass shooting,” Baker said.
As cameras from national news outlets panned the scene, taking in other hotels like the Luxor Las Vegas, Baker said she realized the images were “where I had just walked.”
Recalling her impressions during the trip, Baker said she and her neighbor “had a really good time, and honestly, I even told her I don’t feel unsafe here. I do not get a bad feeling for here. To think I was staying in the same hotel” as the alleged shooter.
Police identified the suspected shooter as Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., a retired accountant who also was among the dead. “He could have been there when I was there,” Baker said.
Later Monday, as the death toll climbed to 59 with more than 525 injured, Baker said she remained in shock.
“It’s devastating to think that all could happen two days after I left,” she said.
