A musician who was on stage when a gunman started firing into the audience and killed 60 people has now detailed ‘breaking down’ in the aftermath.
In 2017 Jason Aldean was performing at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas when a gunman in a 32nd floor room of the Mandalay Bay Resort across the road started shooting audience-goers.
The 64-year-old man fired more than 1,000 rounds, killing 60 people and wounding at least 413 others, however the ensuing panic in the crowd left around 867 injured in total.
The gunman was later found dead in his room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, with a motive never determined.
The 2017 Las Vegas shooting became the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in American history.
Now, eight years on, country music star Jason has spoken about the impact of the horrifying incident.
‘It was a festival like we’ve done a million times,’ he said on the latest episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
‘It was just obviously something that we weren’t prepared for.’
The 48-year-old then spoke about facing a packed schedule in the days after the shooting, reuniting with his extended family and opening Saturday Night Live within that week.
‘We finally got out of there the next afternoon, home and you’re just glad to be home, show up, my mom’s crying,’ he said.
‘You know, my oldest daughter was in school, freaking out, thinking that somebody was trying to shoot us, so all the details were still kind of coming out.’
On October 7, Jason opened SNL and spoke about the shooting and how he’d ‘witnessed one of the worst tragedies in American history’.
‘Like everyone, I’m struggling to understand what happened that night (and why) and how to pick up the pieces and start to heal. But you can be sure that we’re going to walk through these tough times together, every step of the way. Because when America is at its best, our bond and our spirit — it’s unbreakable.’
In the Armchair Expert interview, Jason said that the morning after filming SNL, he flew back to Las Vegas to visit victims in hospital.
‘That was tough. People hadn’t recovered from their wounds yet,’ he called.
In the month after the shooting the musician finished his tour, with his son Memphis then being born a few weeks later, leaving Jason at home spending time with family and finally having the chance to take in everything that had happened.
‘All of a sudden at home, we had something else to focus on versus watching that on the news every day. For me, you know, I kind of had a breakdown in my house one day. It was after my son was born and just all that heaviness of everything, just getting laid on you.’
‘I ended up having a moment at my house where I broke down thinking about all the people that I could have lost, all the people that we did lose as far as fans, but my inner circle of people and my wife was there eight months pregnant with my son and all these things.’
Years after the event, Jason said he finally found it ‘easier to talk about now’.
‘At the time it wasn’t because you’re still trying to comprehend what had just happened. You know, my bass player, my best friend for the last 25 years, his bass had a bullet lodged in it that he was wearing when we were on stage.
‘For our little family, our little crew, we got so lucky, not one injury to any of our guys. And you’re happy about that, but then you’re like, feel guilty to be happy about there’s like this guilt-ridden thing.’
But when asked if he sought out therapy after witnessing the horrific shooting, he said he was ‘too Southern’ but shared an ‘ironic’ detail.
‘We funded a ton of therapy for all the crews and everybody else. My therapy was me, my wife, my band, all of us that were there. We all talked about it amongst each other,’ he said,
‘At some point you can either run from it or accept it and try and make something good out of it. And that’s what we tried to do.’
Days after the 2017 shooting Jason’s wife Brittany, who was heavily pregnant at the time, described the moment she feared she’d never get to hold her unborn baby.
‘It’s been hard to process what happened the other night… still feel like I’m in a daze. First and foremost, THANK YOU to the first responders. It amazed me at the time and still continues to – these people completely put everyone else’s lives before theirs and we are all forever grateful.’
‘When the gunfire started, I was not with Jason, but with some friends in a tent closer to Mandalay. As you can imagine my first instinct was to run to him and his was the same.
‘As we laid behind equipment onstage with some of our road family, bullets flying past… all I could think was “I never even got to hold my baby”. We all made sure the others knew we loved them and then ran for cover where we stayed for the next couple hours (Not knowing if there were multiple shooters, where the bullets were coming from… NOTHING).’
‘We were the lucky ones. I can’t put into words the pain and heartache we feel for the ones who are no longer with us. May God be with their families and friends during this horrendous time. Each and every one of you are and will forever be in our prayers,’ she added.
The couple, who have been married since 2015, also share daughter Navy, 5.
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