Cabbie who picked up Las Vegas shooting victims: I’m no hero

“There were so many other people who put themselves in harm’s way,” Cori Langdon said. “I just stumbled upon it.”

Langdon, 58, a taxi driver for about seven of the 12 years she has lived in Las Vegas, sat at a desk at Desert Cab headquarters on Sunday, her first day back at work since the night of the shooting, and retold her version of events as they unfolded on Oct. 1.

Langdon was at the end of a taxi line behind the Mandalay Bay, waiting to pick up passengers about 10 p.m. Oct. 1 when she heard the first round of gunfire.

“I heard what sounded like two pops,” she said. “I think that’s when he was blowing out the window, but I don’t know.”

At first she thought the sound was coming from fireworks across the street. The next round of fire sounded more like a jackhammer, she said.

Video rolling

“Then it continued and that’s when I turned on the video camera.”

For the next 18 minutes, Langdon recorded video on her cellphone. As reports of a shooting came in over her radio, she turned out of the taxi line, warned bystanders in the valet area about the shooting and turned out of the parking lot to leave.

She drove east from the hotel, toward the festival, to see what was happening.

“I wasn’t thinking I could warn anybody or anything; it just wasn’t in my mind,” Langdon said.

Langdon drove her cab across Las Vegas Boulevard and saw police officers crouched beneath their cars with rifles. That’s when she saw people begin to crawl over the festival’s fence and pour into the street.

She said she couldn’t believe that the shooter could be someone armed with a gun equipped to spray bullets like a machine gun into a crowd. “I just didn’t even fathom that it could be anything like that.”

One man was shouting “broken leg” as he helped a woman walk toward Langdon’s cab, and Langdon told them to get in. Not seeing any blood, she still thought maybe the bleachers had collapsed.

Three more people jumped into the cab from the opposite side and her cab filled with shouts about an active shooter, telling Langdon to drive as far away as possible. Two passengers offered Langdon $100 to take them to New York-New York, but she refused to drive toward the Strip.

“They were kind of mean, to be honest with you,” Langdon said. “But I have to give them a pass because they had just experienced the most horrific thing they’d ever seen.”

She dropped the first couple off at a Vons and drove the other passengers to their Airbnb.

“I’m very sad for all the victims … and I’m so happy that all the real heroes are being interviewed,” Langdon said of the first responders, including paramedics, police officers, and firefighters, who responded to the Strip.

Langdon also commended the Uber drivers who helped people flee, despite reports that there were more shooters at Hooters, Excalibur, Bellagio and New York-New York.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t have gone back anyway, so that shows I’m not really a hero,” she said. “If I had to choose one word to say how I felt for a few minutes while it was happening, I was just clueless … and dumbfounded and in disbelief. Three words.”

Langdon’s anxiety following the shooting has manifested in unexpected ways, she said. The sound of characters being deleted in the text messaging app on her iPhone sounds like machine gunfire to her.

She’s also had dreams that she’s driving people in the cab and isn’t sure what’s going on, but knows that she’s scared and people are screaming.

‘You can’t be afraid to do things’

Some of Langdon’s friends have said they’re afraid to go to the grocery store.

“But I told them, ‘You can’t be afraid to do things … If you’re afraid to do things, then the terrorists or these crazy people, the dude up on the 32nd floor, then he wins,” she said. “And you can’t let those people win. You gotta live your life … You have to keep on going.”

Langdon said she’s proud that she had the wherewithal to start recording when she did.

“I wanted people who weren’t there to see what was going through other people’s minds … the people who did experience the horror and saw things that nobody else will ever see,” she said.

She said she’s received hundreds of messages and calls about her video, some of which were unkind.

“I’ve heard everything from ‘You’re an angel’ and ‘You’re a hero’ to telling me what a terrible person I was because I asked them for $11 that was on the meter,” Langdon said. “But if they don’t pay it I have to pay it, and I don’t have a lot of money these days.”

She said she’s also annoyed that people are using her video, without permission, to spread rumors and conspiracy theories.

But most responses have been positive, Langdon said.

The cashier at her local grocery store gave her the “hero discount” on her lettuce, and another shopper wrapped her in a bear hug, Langdon said. A stranger from Australia messaged her on Facebook with a picture of two koalas that read, “We’ve got your back.”

Langdon has a strong affinity for the place she calls home and said she believes it will rebound from the shooting.

“I love this city, I really do,” she said. “I feel like as a taxi driver, I’m an ambassador to the city and I’m the first person (people) see when they come out of the airport.

“I just hope they continue to come back.”

Contact Kimber Laux at klaux@reviewjournal.com. Follow @lauxkimber on Twitter.