Man Saves 30 Las Vegas

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

A serious gunshot wound that pierced one of his lungs was not an impediment for a father of a family to save the lives of at least 30 people during the massacre that occurred this Sunday in Las Vegas that left 59 dead and more than 515 wounded.

Jonathan Smith, a 30-year-old mechanic based in the Game Capital, was with 9 other family members when Stephen Paddock started spraying bullets into the crowd. The public witnessed the outdoor concert by singer Jason Aldean, which was part of the Route 91 Harvest festival.

"You could hear the gunshots," Smith told the Washington Post. "It sounded like they were coming from all over Las Vegas Boulevard."

The man said that when the shots started to sound, he ran with his family to a disabled parking lot and immediately returned to the fire zone to look for his nieces who had gone missing.

The man reacted to the chaos by helping others to flee the fire. "I got a few out of there," he told NBC's Today show. "I decided that I was not going to abandon anyone."

His heroic work was not interrupted even when a bullet grazed his shoulder. "I couldn't feel my neck. There was a feeling of heat in my arm,”he explained to the Post. "I probably have to live with this bullet for the rest of my life."

The also father of three children, he was transferred to Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, where doctors discovered that he had a broken rib, a fractured clavicle and a perforated lung.

A photo of Smith sitting in a hallway of the medical center circulated in networks where he was recognized as a hero. Now friends and family have started a campaign on GoFundMe to help him with his medical bills.