October 1 Shooting: Survivors Welcome Healing at Las Vegas Exhibit | Local Las Vegas

On October 1, 2017, five women, unknown to each other, attended the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas.

But after surviving the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, Cheryl Ast, 54, Sue Ann Cornwell, 59, Alicia Mierke, 62, Sue Nelson, 69, and Edie Wood, 77, found each other.

“We did it in the Healing Garden,” Nelson said. The Lake Havasu, Arizona, resident said she returns to the Las Vegas Valley every month to tend to the garden where 58 trees were planted just days after the mass shooting, one for each victim who died in the immediate aftermath .

On Monday afternoon, the five friends gathered in the Rotunda of the Clark County Government Center and visited an exhibit commemorating October 1st.

Ast, who lives in Calgary, Canada, stood in the rotunda and said she found some comfort meeting her fellow survivors in the healing garden after having no support at home.

“I painted rocks. I cried because I felt heard and important and important,” Ast said. “The Healing Garden is my sanctuary.”

But while the five women said the garden is a place for the 58 who lost their lives and the survivors who fled, hid and fought alongside them, there will soon be a memorial for everyone, also for the first responders.

A display of the new memorial, designed by JCJ Architecture, was displayed in a glass display case in the building’s circular gallery.

Visitors to the gallery also saw artwork honoring the victims, a display of miniature angels and artifacts including a cowboy hat, an unopened beer can and a poker chip left at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign in honor of those who died.

Little angels

In another glass case at the entrance to the circular gallery were dozens of small pink and blue metal angels surrounding a plaque with the names of the “58 souls who lost their lives on that terrible day.”

While survivors in attendance said it was crucial that the 58 people killed in the shooting were remembered as such, the official death toll from the massacre stands at 60, after two women died in 2020 died from complications related to injuries sustained in the shooting.

Eric Kimbrough, 62, said he saw the little angels from a distance and was drawn closer. He was at the Clark County Government Center with his wife, Maureen Kimbrough, 49.

“We just had other things on our minds,” Eric Kimbrough said. “But as we were walking, it caught our eye.”

Cornwell said it is important that people take time to view the exhibit. “It’s part of history,” she said.

For those who attended the Route 91 Harvest music festival, Cornwell said she hopes survivors can also find peace in the exhibit. “You can maybe find a memory from this weekend, and hopefully it’s a memory that can be a good memory,” Cornwell said. “Because it was a good weekend until it wasn’t.”

Cornwell, a Las Vegas native, said she looks forward to seeing the new memorial tell the full story of that night.

“It will show how much we were looking forward to arriving on Friday,” she said, referring to the final night of the festival. “But more than that, it will highlight the healing that has come from it since then and the changes not only in people but in hotel regulations.”

Since the 64-year-old lone gunman shot bullets through the 32nd-floor window of his Mandalay Bay hotel room seven years ago, several hotels on the Strip have overhauled their security practices.

“I’m not leaving you”

Several survivors who visited the gallery Monday wore T-shirts with the slogan “Tough Crowd,” which Nelson said was a reference to a song of the same name by country artist Jason Aldean.

But on stage on October 1, 2017, Aldean was busy singing a few lines of his song “When She Says Baby” when shots were fired into the crowd.

In the minutes that followed, Nelson said ordinary people helped each other.

“I would still be sitting under my chair” if there were no helpers in the crowd, said Wood, who lives in Buckeye, Arizona.

“I had a man cover me with his body that I didn’t even know about,” Ast said. “And when I said I couldn’t run anymore and just leave, he said, ‘I won’t leave you.’ Please, you must move on.’ ”

Ast still doesn’t know the name of the man who helped her, she said. “There are more heroes than most people even know.”

The survivors are like a family, said the five women. They often wear pins or keychains that they say don’t mean much to anyone but mean everything to their fellow survivors.

“Routers” will hug each other and say they’re glad to be here when they see them, Nelson explained.

Wood’s eyes filled with tears as she described how much returning to Las Vegas means to her.

Mierke said there are moments of peace and emotion when survivors reunite in the days around Oct. 1 every year.

“We never know when it’s going to happen,” Mierke said. “It just happens.”

Contact Estelle Atkinson at [email protected]. Follow @estellelilym on X and @estelleatkinsonreports on Instagram.