Santa Barbara resident describes moments shots rang out at Las Vegas concert

Santa Barbara resident Kimi Wong described the moments a hail of bullets interrupted the Route 91 Harvest Festival she was attending Sunday along with approximately 22,000 others.

“We heard what sounded like fireworks or poppers, and everyone kind of looked around and didn’t really know what to do,” said Wong

As a wave of bullets descended onto the crowd from what police are saying was a lone gunman shooting from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, Wong and her friends started turning from their location on the left side of the stage and began running as fast as they could.

“And so when we heard another round we all went down on the ground and there were people just telling us ‘Cover your heads! Cover your heads!’ And then when it stopped we just ran as far as we could until it happened again,” she said

“People were hiding behind cars, under cars, behind trash cans–just anything that you could get behind,” said Wong.

Fortunately, Wong and her friends got to what she described as a three-story VIP bleacher where a couple pulled them in to safety. But that didn’t last long.

“And then they started evacuating people out of there and so they just said ‘Run! Run!’ and so we ran through the parking lot. People had knocked over the fences–and it’s like barbed wire fences–and they just said ‘Just keep running and don’t stop running,'” said Wong.

Wong said she and her friends kept running until they got to a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip where they got into an elevator with dozens of other people.

“And then one of my friends was knocking on doors and people were just letting people into their hotel rooms just to find safety because no one knew what was going on. It was just mass panic,” said Wong.

Wong and her friends were staying at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino but were unable to return to their hotel rooms until hours later. Wong said she was watching the news on TV when she learned the magnitude of the incident she had just lived through.

Wong and her friends are on their way back to Santa Barbara.