New RJ database connects survivors of Las Vegas shooting

It’s been almost two months and Kevin Anderson still has not washed the blood-stained khaki pants or the navy blue T-shirt he was wearing on Oct. 1. The blood was not his own, but belonged to the many wounded and dead bodies he helped carry after the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival.

Many of his memories are mere silhouettes. Sometimes he can only remember people’s wounds and not their faces.

Others he cannot forget: the Latina woman, who he and others carried to the makeshift triage area on a trash bin or the young man leaning against a truck with a gunshot wound to his chest.

He’d like to know how they are, if they survived.

“There’s some closure with making those connections,” said Anderson, who has worked as a first responder for nearly three decades with American Medical Response, a private ambulance company. “There’s some healing with that and I think it’s all part of the process for all of us.”

Many shooting survivors are searching for the conditions of those they met that night, people whose names they never learned in the chaos, but whose actions they have not forgotten. Like Anderson, some are searching for the wounded, whom they tried to help. Others are looking for those who shielded them from bullets. They are looking for someone who helped them or someone whose life they tried to save.

In an effort to help shooting survivors reunite, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has launched the Route 91 Harvest Festival Survivors Connection. A searchable database, it is meant to serve as a conduit to facilitate contact between those seeking to find those who shared an experience connected to the shooting.

The Review-Journal, which began taking submissions for the database a week after the shooting, will not display contact information for those in the database. If seekers believes they have found the person they are searching for, they will be able to contact the Review-Journal for those details.

Anderson, 55 of Portland, already knows the healing power in making those connections. He and wife have kept in touch with two of the shooting victims they helped that night, an off-duty California police officer and his now fiancée. A bullet struck the young man in the head and his fiancée suffered a gunshot wound to her back. Anderson and his wife were able to assist them off the field and into private vehicles taking the wounded to hospitals.

Since then, the two families have stayed in each other’s lives, giving updates on the police officer’s condition and sharing their experiences. When the California couple got engaged on Thanksgiving, they made sure to tell Anderson.

“I think we are kind of living through his recovery because there was so much death that night,” he said. “They have been a shining light for all of us through this and it’s been so special for us to watch his recovery and it’s been so uplifting to have that connection.”

As for his clothes from that night, Anderson does not know why he has not washed them yet, perhaps they serve as a reminder of the shooting, what he survived. He’ll wash them when he’s ready.

“I want to have that control,” he said. “We didn’t choose what happened that night and choices are an important thing in our life right now.”

Contact Anita Hassan at ahassan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4643. Follow @anitasnews on Twitter.