Coverage of the latest news on the tragic mass shooting in Las Vegas, checking in on the scene, how hotel security may change following this event, and more.
K-FROG's Dustin Shappell left Route 91 Harvest Festival just before the shooting started
Dustin Shappell expected a fun weekend of live music to be the most significant thing he would remember from his weekend working the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas. Instead, he narrowly avoided being in the middle of an active shooting situation.
"We were planning on staying for Jason Aldean," said Shappell, the promotions coordinator for California Country music station K-FROG. He was helping coordinate his station's coverage of the three-day music festival happening on the Strip near the Mandalay Bay Hotel.
Musician Jason Aldean was the concert festival's final act, and though Shappell had planned to stay, he and his coworkers made a last minute decision to get some food just before shots were fired.
A gunman, identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, opened fire on the crowd attending the Festival. The shots came from the window of the nearby Mandalay Bay.
"We suddenly saw a crowd of people start running," said Shappell, who had gone to the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino to get a bite. "We had no idea [what happened]. All we hear is, 'Active shooter,' and we think we need to get as far away from here as possible."
'You let your guard down when you're at a music festival.'
According to Shappell, an event like the Route 91 Harvest Festival draws a diverse crowd.
"A lot of the time, it's country music fans," Shappell said, of those in attendance. "But you also get a lot of people from all walks of life. We saw people holding babies, we saw 80-year-olds. Just about everybody. And that's what's so scary about this all."
While there were tens of thousands of fans in Las Vegas to attend the festival, Shappell said the setting was comparably intimate to some of the biggest country music events of the year.
"You let your guard down when you're at a music festival," Shappell said. "You're having fun, you're having a couple drinks and you're listening to your favorite music. Everyone's having a fantastic time; until of course the entire weekend took a turn for the worst."
Shappell and his coworkers had to leave the area as quickly as possible. They were led out of the MGM Grand Hotel by the building's staff. "We hopped into a cab. We just told them, 'Drive us anywhere. It doesn't matter where. Just drive because we need to get out of here.'"
Music festivals are 'a whole lot less safe'
Shappell said that an attack like this is especially hard to deal with. Concerts are a big part of his life, both personally and professionally.
"The radio business is starting to become a whole lot like the concert business," Shappell said. "My passion is to go see my favorite bands; To go out to festivals and stuff like that. Suddenly, it's starting to become where it's a whole lot less safe."
Now, Shappell believes that he'll spend more time looking over his shoulder at concerts to make sure he is still in a safe situation and is ready to leave on short notice.
But Shappell is also grateful that his last-minute decision had such a big difference.
"I've been watching all these videos and it seems like everybody was just frozen," he said. "Then you start to think 'What would I do in that situation? Would I have frozen and just stayed on the ground? Or would I have bolted, found protection and, possibly, even saved a life? It's a crazy situation that somehow we decided to leave a little early and that was a blessing. "
To hear more about Dustin Shappell's experience at the Las Vegas shooting, click the blue play button above.
Las Vegas shooting: 'every first responder in the city came out'
Clark County officials released updated numbers and details from Sunday night's mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. With at least 58 people dead and more than 500 injured, it is the worst mass shooting in modern American history.
For the latest, A Martinez spoke with Carrie Kaufman, host and producer of "State of Nevada" on Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, right after she attended the press conference with local officials.
What is known so far about the victims?
They kept saying the victims were of all ages. There were kids there, there were people in their 20's, people a little older. We don't know how many of the victims were shot and how many of victims were hurt running away. 515 people are now in four area hospitals and some of them are more injured than others. They're asking for blood, so that indicates to me a lot of the people were shot. Blood is a big thing.
Update: These are the Southern California victims of Las Vegas shooting
How are the hospitals handling the large number of patients?
Every first responder in the city came out. They saw firefighters and paramedics drenched in blood, soaked in blood. There are bodies that are still there and they say it's going to be pretty much all day before they clean up the bodies and identify them and match them with their loved ones.
Click the blue audio player above to hear the full interview.
OC undersheriff after Las Vegas shooting: Orange County 'is a target-rich environment'
A number of Southern Californians were at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas Sunday night, including local law enforcement officers.
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti tweeted Monday morning dozens of Los Angeles City and County employees were there.
Dozens of LA City employees were at LV concert (LAPD-1 injured w/ GSW, LAFD at least 2 w/ GSW so far). LA personnel on ground to assist. EG
— Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) October 2, 2017
There were also several off-duty personnel from the Orange County Sheriff's Department. One deputy sustained non-life threatening injuries after being struck by gunfire, as well as several other members of the department.
A Martinez checked in with Undersheriff Don Barnes of the Orange County Sheriff's Department for an update on those who were at the festival.
We know last night that we had several members of our department there—both sworn personnel and their family. One of our deputies was struck by gunfire as part of that incident.
We believe at this time that the injuries they sustained are not life-threatening but they are still being treated. They were there as concert-goers. We didn't have any personnel who were there working in any capacity. They were unfortunately just caught up, like many people there, as just victims of gunfire and a horrific incident.
As someone who's in law enforcement, I can imagine that processing an event like this is not easy. You know what it's like to be a first responder, and you also know what it's like to be off-duty, trying to enjoy life. What was going in your head as you heard what was happening?
You hope that those who succumb to injuries doesn't increase. The number is already way too high and that makes it really difficult to deal with. But the first responders, they're the ones running into harm's way when everybody is trying to run from it and [it] takes a psychological toll on the individual. It can take a tremendous toll over time—immediately and then over the next several weeks and months. We want to make sure that we care for them as well.
The response is very difficult. We do unfortunately train for these types of things as best we can. Prevention is everything so we want to make sure that those who have information make that information available so we can try to prevent these types of acts from occurring. But if they do, and this one did, we have to be as responsive as possible and hope that they don't replicate in any other way.
How does an event like this affect the way your department prepares for something like this going forward?
Of course, you can't plan and train for everything but you want to be as inclusive in your training as you possibly can. We just recently went through a mass shooting exercise at one of our local malls which would be very much like what was encountered there—concentration of people, multiple injured people. It was a multi-agency collaboration. But you hope that you never have to implement that plan.
Preparation is everything. We do in Orange County have a terrorist infusion center. We're the only county in the state that has its own. That's an intelligence vetting mechanism that looks at counter-terrorism or any types of threats that come into the county. And Orange County is, in my opinion, a target-rich environment, if you will. High commerce, high tourism, high profile areas that we have within the county.
But the threat has changed significantly since 16 years ago, post-9/11. People like this individual, not even on the grid, who acts out in such a horrific manner. And I'm not even sure how anybody can plan for something like that short of somebody giving us information that's actionable prior to the incident taking place.
Click the audio player above to hear the full interview.
How Vegas handles hotel security differently from the rest of the country
How does a hotel in one of the busiest tourist attractions keep their guests safe?
That's something people found themselves asking following the mass shooting in Las Vegas that took place October 1.
The Las Vegas strip is a unique place, and that provides some added challenges when it comes to security. Hotels are tasked with providing safety while maintaining a laissez-faire and often wild atmosphere.
While there are no standardized procedures for the hospitality industry across the board, large hotels on the Strip have made up their own culture around security. For example, visible security measures like armed officers on the casino floor have been frowned upon, while hotel entryways and corridors tend to have far more cameras than the average hotel.
Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Dick Hudak, former FBI agent and a longtime expert in global hotel and resort security.
Securing a very busy place takes teamwork
It takes a great deal of communication and coordination between the hotels and casinos and law enforcement.
Part of all security in a hotel-casino environment is to include more than security officers in that plan. It includes communication with active-duty metropolitan police officers. And typically, a property of this size, would have one or two on premise. So, coordination with the active-duty police officers relevant. Internally, security directors like to include housekeepers, valets, bellmen, room service, registration, bar and restaurant personnel to tip them off when they see something out of order or suspicious.
Balancing entertainment and security
We realize that security requires inconvenience and customers and guests really try to avoid inconvenience. Flying out to Las Vegas, waiting in line, and taxis and so forth.... so when they arrive at the hotel, they do not want to be inconvenienced.... In order to create less inconvenience, hospitality may be moving toward a situation where the use of a cellphone may allow you to go directly to your room and open your guest room door, which security professionals do not want to see because we feel that the more eyes upon an incoming guest, the better, so that we possibly recognize danger as it comes into our property.
Vegas quirks aside, this event was unprecedented
As any security program which is dynamic, it has to consider risks involved forseability, things that happen like this and other situations. And I don't know of another situation involving a hotel quite like this one. A case like this, it's the first one of its kind. So, we have to consider other responses... and really double down on training on staff and better communication with law enforcement.
To hear about hospitality safety and what the future might hold, click on the media player above.
Don't get hoaxed: misinformation spreads rapidly after breaking news
As of Monday morning, the Las Vegas shooting death toll climbed to 58 and more than 500 were injured. It is now considered the worst mass shooting in modern American history. From his hotel room, a lone gunman fired on concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival happening across the street.
More information is expected to pour out of Las Vegas in the coming days. When it comes to breaking news like Las Vegas, there's always tons of information flying around, but not all of it is fact.
Ryan Broderick is the deputy global news director at Buzzfeed. He's been writing about false stories and, this morning, zeroed in on those coming out of Las Vegas.
When Broderick spoke to A Martinez, he explained that the spread of misinformation typically happens in phases:
"The first wave of misinformation that hit Twitter was largely done by teenagers who were sort of just doing it to prank people...
The second wave as Americans started to wake up and internet communities started to get into gear, it was more political. So, you've got people on the far right figuring out how twist this for their own angles and platforms.
And I think that the period that we're now entering is where a lot of larger publishers are assigning which bits of fake news and which hoaxes they want to amplify for traffic for their Facebook crowd."
To hear more about the hoaxes being spread and tips on how to stay vigilant, click the blue play button above.
How the country music world is reacting to the Las Vegas shooting
A country music festival in Las Vegas was the scene of the worst mass shooting in modern American history, with at least 58 people dead and more than 500 injured. A gunman opened fire on the crowd Sunday night from a hotel room window causing panic.
The Route 91 Harvest Festival started in 2014 and it's become one of country music's largest events, with headliners including Jason Aldean, Sam Hunt, Jake Owen and Eric Church.
Fans and music industry professionals crowded into Las Vegas for the three-day festival, including Andrew Cohen of the artist management company Suit Management.
Cohen stayed at the Mandalay Bay Hotel on the same floor as the shooter.
And Lauren Jo Black, editor of the music blog Sounds Like Nashville, has covered the event's increasing popularity among country music fans.
They both joined A Martinez on Take Two this morning.