[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 159 (Wednesday, September 26, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6321-S6322]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Las Vegas Mass Shooting

  Mr. HELLER. Madam President, while it has been nearly a year since a 
madman's actions devastated Las Vegas, the shock and pain related to 
October 1 still remains today.
  Fifty-eight innocent people lost their lives. Over 800 people were 
injured, and many of them continue to face a long road to physical and 
emotional recovery. Know that you are not alone on that road--we 
support you and we are praying for you.
  Our community is still grieving, and it will never be the same, but 
hatred and fear will not win that night. That is because even though 
one man's horrific actions exposed humanity at its worst, what followed 
were countless stories of true heroism and humanity at its very best.
  Las Vegas showed the world what it meant to be Vegas Strong, and I 
had the honor of experiencing it firsthand in the eyes and voices of 
those who survived and those who were eager to help others. On that 
tragic night, so many ordinary Nevadans made the choice to be 
extraordinary. Let me give you a couple examples.
  They stayed on the field to help the wounded as shots continued to 
rain down. They took their shirts off their backs, used their belts as 
tourniquets, applied pressure to help stop a stranger from bleeding to 
death. Some made stretchers on the spot using the festival barriers. 
Some used their trucks and vehicles to transport the wounded to the 
hospital. For example, Taylor Winston, a marine and Iraq war veteran, 
managed to escape the gunfire. He helped several people over the fence 
when they took cover. Then he found an abandoned vehicle, turned it 
into a makeshift ambulance. After rushing multiple people to the 
hospital, he turned around and went back. He ultimately drove around 30 
injured people to the hospital.
  That night, police officers also covered concertgoers, shielded them 
from gunfire, and directed them to safety. Firefighters, paramedics, 
ambulance drivers, who had never encountered anything as horrific as 
that carnage of October 1, plunged into danger to save lives without 
hesitation, even though they were defenseless, because that is what 
they do.
  That week I had the privilege of meeting a Las Vegas police officer, 
Sergeant Jonathan Riddle. He was stationed a block from the shooting 
scene doing traffic control. After shots were fired from Mandalay Bay, 
he took off sprinting toward the hotel, even though everyone else was 
running away from it.
  Dozens of Metro police officers, including Officer Tyler Peterson, 
who was on his second day of the job, did the exact same thing. They 
rushed toward the firestorm to help in any way they could and of course 
to save lives.
  When I visited the local hospitals, I was struck by the stories 
doctors and nurses shared about concertgoers who

[[Page S6322]]

responded bravely and admirably; stories about people who reacted to 
cowardly violence, stood in the face of danger to protect a neighbor, a 
friend, a family member, or someone they had never met.
  A doctor at UMC put it best when he said, the patients showed 
exemplary courage. He told me he spoke to all the patients in the 
trauma room. Some of them were strangers who accompanied the person who 
sustained injuries while shielding them from bullets. He told me many 
of the patients in the emergency room that night said to the doctors: 
That person is more seriously injured than I am. Take care of them 
first. Come back to me later.
  When I visited UMC, I had the opportunity to meet with one of the 
respiratory therapists who attended the concert. She showed me her 
phone, which had been shattered by a bullet that night. Plastic had 
torn through her hand, and it was embedded in her skin. What did she 
do? She pulled the shards out of her hand, bandaged it herself, rushed 
to the hospital to try to help people who she said needed more help 
than she did.
  I am so grateful for the staff at our hospitals whose skill, whose 
composure and dedication saved one life after another. I am also 
grateful for the work of our law enforcement and our first responders 
on the scene. Each unit took an all-hands-on-deck approach, and 
everyone functioned as one team.
  Instead of being frozen by the aftershock of crippling grief, Nevada 
mobilized and true leaders emerged. My friend Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who 
heads the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, is one of them, but 
many of the heroes who emerged in the wake of this tragedy didn't have 
a badge. Instead, they were teachers, waiters, security guards, and 
construction workers who assumed the responsibility to protect others.
  Take the story of Jack Beaton, a man whose final act on Earth was 
draping himself over his wife to protect her from deadly bullets or 
John, a cab driver, who accelerated toward the screams and chaos and 
drove nearly a dozen people to safety.

  Everyone banded together. Local organizations and businesses 
throughout the State and country stepped up to help. Las Vegas 
Convention Center's South Hall was dedicated to family reunification 
and support services. Airlines answered the call to provide free 
flights to families of victims. Hotels and casinos across Las Vegas 
offered free rooms. Lines of people eager to give blood twisted around 
Las Vegas. Some even waited in line more than 7 hours just because they 
wanted to help in any way they could. Just a few hours after the 
injured concertgoers flooded the hospitals in Las Vegas, the Red Cross 
encouraged volunteer blood donations. In a statement, the Red Cross 
said, ``Last night, tragedy illustrates that it's the blood already on 
the shelves that helps during an emergency.''
  My wife Lynne and I joined the masses of Nevadans who donated blood 
in Las Vegas last October, and on Monday, this October 1, on this day 
each year going forward, we will donate blood in recognition of this 
anniversary. Members of my staff who want to give blood have committed 
to doing the same.
  While it may be just a small gesture, it is an important one because 
when the city of Las Vegas needed help, patients needed blood, the Red 
Cross was able to step in because the inventory was there.
  When I returned to Washington, DC, from Las Vegas last October, I 
immediately began pursuing every available option to provide relief for 
victims and their families, as well as assistance for local law 
enforcement and emergency responders. From pressing the Attorney 
General to make funding available for victims and their families and 
securing funding to cover Nevada's law enforcement overtime costs 
relating to the response to the shooting, to leading a bipartisan 
resolution recognizing the innocent lives which were lost, working with 
Senator Cortez Masto to ask health insurers and our airlines to do 
whatever they could to help victims, I worked with this Congress and 
this White House to deliver resources to Nevada to try to help in any 
way we could.
  To help Las Vegas prevent future attacks, I also spoke with the 
President on Air Force One on our way out of Nevada last October about 
the critical role of Federal funding to protect a city that welcomes 
over 40 million people annually.
  As a direct result, the criteria used to determine funding that is 
allocated to high-threat urban areas for terrorism was updated, and 
this year Las Vegas received nearly double the amount of Federal 
funding compared to last year. I will never stop working to see that 
Nevada has the resources it needs to keep our communities safe.
  As President Donald Trump said, this attack was an act of pure evil, 
and unity cannot be shattered by evil. He also said the bonds between 
the people of the United States cannot broken by violence, and I agree 
with him. We are all still in this together, and together we will 
continue moving down the long road of recovery by honoring the memory 
of those lost and by holding on to the sense of compassion and 
community that emerged.
  I, like many others, could not only feel the strong sense of family, 
faith, and strength in the wake of October 1, I saw it firsthand. The 
immeasurable pain, the suffering and devastation inflicted by one man 
elicited a profound, innate, and immediate human response from a city 
of people who stood side by side during its darkest hour to protect a 
friend or a stranger they had never met.
  Ronald Reagan once said: ``Those who say that we are in a time when 
there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look.''
  On October 1 and in the days that followed, the world witnessed a Las 
Vegas that they may have not known--a place that has been further 
defined by the heroes among us, the ones who sprang into action that 
night. That was truly the identity of Las Vegas. Las Vegas is 
resilient, and together we will continue to be Vegas Strong.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.