Las Vegas Shooting: Meet the nurse who rescued victims during attack

"I just felt that I had to."

A young nurse named Vanessa was at the Route 91 Harvest music festival Sunday in Las Vegas when a shooter starting firing bullets into the crowd from his hotel room in the Mandalay Bay.

But instead of simply saving herself in the hysteria, she acted heroically, going back and helping anyone she could.

“There was very short increments where there was breaks in between the shots,” the Orange County, California resident told Las Vegas news station KTNV 13 of the initial moments of gunshots. “But it literally felt like, it just continued for 20 minutes straight. And every time there was a break, we ran, and we ran.”

Vanessa, whose last name is unknown, explained that even while she was running, she still wasn’t sure if the noises she was hearing were actually bullets until her friend noticed that someone near them had been shot.

In an act of heroism, Vanessa says that she ended going back into the scene of the crime because she is a nurse. “I just felt that I had to,” she explained. “So I went to three different scenes, the first one was okay, the second one was worse, and by the time I got to the third one, there was just dead bodies, there was like six. And they were all young people.”

She went on to explain that everyone, from doctors, nurses, cops, and paramedics, to regular citizens, were all working together to help other people. "Everyone's just communicating and working together, ‘You got this person’, ‘You got this person’, ‘You got this person.’ It was completely horrible. But it was absolutely amazing to see all the people come together.”

As devastated as we all were seeing the stories coming from Las Vegas (especially those of us who had loved ones at the concert), it's incredibly uplifting to read about people like Vanessa who stepped up to help those in need. Clearly, there is still some powerful good in the world.

"I just felt that I had to." Read Full Story