At first, they thought it was fireworks — but it wasn't. How a Vegas concert went from melody to mayhem
LAS VEGAS - Pop pop pop pop pop. As bullets rained onto the crowd gathered on the Strip for three days of country music, Travis Phippen's training kicked in.
The off-duty emergency medical technician crawled from one victim to another, more than a dozen in all. They lay helpless and bleeding among the cowboy hats and plastic beer cups that concertgoers had dropped in panic when the shooting started.
Phippen plugged wounds with clothing. As he worked, a woman next to him was shot in the head.
He crawled to his next patient, a 240-pound man, and rolled him over.
It was his father.
The two men had traveled rom Santa Clarita, Calif., for the Route 91 Harvest Festival concert but were separated in the chaos. Now John Phippen, 56, was a casualty vying for Travis Phippen's attention.
Phippen tried to plug the bullet hole in his father's back with one of his fingers as he carried him to help. But it would not be enough.
A total of 59 people were killed and 527 injured
