6 years after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, Las Vegas mourns anew
A gunman opened fire at a Las Vegas university on Wednesday, killing three people and leaving another critically injured as students and staff scrambled to barricade classroom doors and take shelter in their dorm rooms.
For some of them, the fear was tinged with a sense of fate — the dark notion that these days, mass shootings are an inevitable consequence of American living and gathering in public spaces.
It was just six years ago and a few miles east that Las Vegas experienced the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, when a gunman opened fire on the Route 91 country music festival, claiming the lives of 60 people.
'It's not gonna be the last time'
Wednesday's shooting started around 11:45 a.m. on the fourth floor of the Lee Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It ended outside, with two university detectives fatally shooting the gunman.
Police have yet to identify the suspect, the victims or a possible motive. The Associated Press reported that the suspected gunman was a professor who had recently been rejected for a job at the school.
For the roughly 40 minutes between the first shots and the all-clear, the campus waited in a state of unease, apprehension and terror.
Law student Carlos Eduardo Espina, 24, had just finished one of his last final exams when his classroom received the alerts of an active shooter.
"At first it didn't seem real. And then you just say, 'Oh s***. It's my turn, I guess,'" he told NPR by phone on Wednesday evening. "That's just the way it's going. This is happening more and more often."
Since the start of this year, more than 630 mass shootings have claimed lives across the U.S., according to the Gun Violence Archive. One poll released earlier this year found that half of all Americans have now been impacted by gun violence — 1 in 6 say they've personally witnessed a shooting.
It was only last week that Espina stood in a crowd to watch a Christmas parade and wondered aloud to his girlfriend not whether, but when, he would get swept up in some kind of mass shooting, he said.
"It's not gonna be the last time," he predicted on Wednesday. "I wouldn't be surprised if there's another, something like this, I don't know, within a few days or weeks. That's just how things are nowadays."
Police say quick action prevented further tragedy
When UNLV alerted students to the shooting on social media, the warning included the phrase "this is not a test," followed by what's become the standby survival advice: ""RUN-HIDE-FIGHT."
PhD student Kathryn Henry said it felt like the city's history with tragedy at least left campus authorities more prepared to respond again.
When the shooting started, she was on the other end of campus, ordering a bagel in the campus recreation center. The next thing she knew, she was swept into a locker room with roughly 100 other people and spent the next two hours sheltering in place.
"Nobody panicked," she said. "They were all very calm. They were very professional. You could tell the drills had worked."
But even the highest levels of preparedness couldn't insulate her from the fear.
When NPR spoke to Henry on Wednesday evening, she was still waiting to hear back from friends, students and colleagues, checking her phone and email for confirmation that everyone was safe.
Police stressed that the death toll would've been far higher if the officers had responded with less speed.
It's unclear how many of the 30,000 students were on campus on Wednesday, but Sheriff Kevin McMahill said a group of students had gathered outside the business school building at the time of the shooting, marking the end of the term with picnics and games.
#LasVegasStrong re-emerges as a rallying cry
UNLV's 332-acre campus is less than 4 miles from the Mandalay Bay hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, where a 64-year-old gunman opened fire from a hotel window on Oct. 1, 2017, targeting a crowd of thousands attending the open-air country music concert below.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Mandalay Bay's parent company MGM thanked first responders who "once again" acted with courage and speed.
The Park MGM Las Vegas hotel was one of several resorts along the Vegas strip that lit up its marquee with what has become a familiar phrase: #VegasStrong.
That hashtag, which trended in the days following 2017's shooting, once again was among the most shared phrases on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday.
But this time, some of those sharing the hashtag are saying they don't want to feel strong; they just want to feel safe.
Rachel Weese, who works as a research coordinator at the school, shared the #VegasStrong hashtag alongside a post explaining that Wednesday's shooting marked the third time she has had to hide in a locked classroom because of the threat of an active shooter.
She told NPR in a social media message that the potential shooters were disarmed before anyone was injured in the first two incidents, but three times feels like too many.
She added in her post, "when will america change?" [Copyright 2023 NPR]
