‘I cried’: Oct. 1 shooting survivors embrace healing at Las Vegas exhibit

On Oct. 1, 2017, five women, strangers to one another, 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 at 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 its immediate aftermath.

On Monday afternoon, the five friends gathered in the rotunda of the Clark County Government Center, visiting an exhibit designed in remembrance of Oct. 1.

Standing in the rotunda, Ast, who lives in Calgary, Canada, said she found some solace when she met her fellow survivors at the healing garden after lacking a support system at home.

“I painted rocks. I cried, because I felt heard and important, and like I mattered,” 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, an upcoming memorial will be for everyone, including first responders.

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

Visitors to the gallery also observed 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

Another glass display case at the entrance to the rotunda gallery held dozens of small pink and blue metal angels that surrounded a plaque with the names of the “58 souls who lost their lives on this horrific day.”

While the survivors present said it’s critical that the 58 who were killed in the shooting are remembered as such, the massacre’s official death toll stands at 60, after two women died in 2020 because of complications related to injuries suffered 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 mind,” Eric Kimbrough said. “But as we were leaving, it did catch our eye.”

Cornwell said that it’s important for 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 find peace in the exhibit, as well. “They can find maybe a memory of that 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, who is from Las Vegas, said she is excited to see the new memorial tell the full story of that night.

“It’s going to tell how we were excited for Friday to get here,” she said, referencing the festival’s final night. “But then even more than that, it’s going to tell the healing that has come out of it since and the changes in not only people but in hotel regulations.”

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

‘I’m not leaving you’

Several survivors visiting the gallery Monday wore T-shirts bearing the slogan “Tough Crowd,” which Nelson said is a reference to a song by the same name by country artist Jason Aldean.

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

In the minutes that followed, Nelson said that everyday people helped one another.

“I would still be under my chair,” if not for 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,” Ast said. “And when I said I couldn’t run anymore, and just leave me, he said, ‘I’m not leaving you. Please, you have to keep going.’ ”

To this day, Ast does not know the name of the man who helped her, she said. “There’s more heroes than most people even know about.”

The survivors are like a family, the five women said. They frequently don pins or use keychains that they said wouldn’t mean much to anyone else but mean everything to fellow survivors.

“Routers” will give each other a hug and tell each other that they’re glad they’re here when they see them, Nelson explained.

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

Mierke said that as survivors reunite in the days surrounding Oct. 1 each year, there are moments of both peace and emotion.

“We don’t ever know when it’s going to happen,” Mierke said. “It just happens.”

Contact Estelle Atkinson at eatkinson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @estellelilym on X and @estelleatkinsonreports on Instagram.