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‘Can you help me?’: 911 calls captures moments after 8 stabbed on Strip

Updated October 12, 2022 - 4:31 pm

Audio released by the Metropolitan Police Department Wednesday captures the moments eight people were stabbed on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Fifteen frantic, screaming phone calls were made to police between 11:40 a.m. and 11:46 a.m. Thursday from witnesses and victims outside Wynn Las Vegas after a series of stabbings killed two people and injured six others.

“I have a stab wound in the back can you help me?” one of the victims Anna Westby said.

Westby was the first to call police, at 11:40 a.m., according to Metro phone records. She could be heard screaming “oh my God,” “he stabbed her” and “help” on the phone. Within a few minutes, a man found the 25-year-old woman and started telling her to breath while applying pressure to her wound.

Westby, who was posing as a showgirl, later said she was with her coworker Maris DiGiovanni, 30, when a man dressed as a chef approached them on a pedestrian bridge and asked for a photo with his knives. The man stabbed DiGiovanni and Westby before running down Las Vegas Boulevard stabbing several other people.

DiGiovanni and Canadian Brent Hallett, 47, died later Thursday from their injuries.

Yoni Barrios, 32, was arrested behind Palazzo holding a 12-inch knife. He told police he felt people were making fun of him when he tried to take a photo with the women, according to his arrest report.

For several minutes, Westby could be heard on the phone mumbling, crying and silently groaning “please,” while a man encourages her to stay awake before the phone call ends abruptly.

In another call, a woman told police she was standing inside Wynn with a 20-year-old woman who was stabbed under her right shoulder.

“She’s bleeding profusely,” the woman tells police. “Somebody walked up to her and stabbed her.”

In another mumbled call, a woman said she was walking with her two daughters when a man in a white shirt walked up behind them and stabbed both daughters.

A woman on that call said, “I don’t want to die.”

The woman who made the call told police on the phone that one of her daughters was stabbed in the upper abdomen, and a man behind them was injured as well.

An online fundraiser posted last week said Gabrielle “Gabby” Hewes and her sister Cassandra “Cassy” Hewes were among those stabbed in the attack. The family declined a request for an interview.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.

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