This post is about my experience and occurrence of events that ultimately saved and spared me at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, where the Las Vegas shooting happened. My response stems from a specific question that I answered on Quora.
We attended the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas together. Just me and her. But I made it back home alive, and my friend didn’t.
We attended the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas together. Just me and her. But I made it back home alive, and my friend didn’t.
I have never been religious. However the events that happened to me throughout the whole weekend of the 3-day festival, from the minute I started driving to Vegas to nonstop bad events that kept happening to me that finally made me drive home on Sunday night right before the shooting, has changed the way I believe in the realm outside of our physical realities.
It was just one bad thing after another for me that weekend. Within 20 minutes of getting onto the highway from LA to Las Vegas on Friday afternoon, my car got side swiped suddenly out of nowhere. I watched the truck that hit me speed down the highway without stopping and disappear into the distance. I called the police and reported the hit and run. I was so upset. My car was brand new. At that point I contemplated turning around and going home to take my car to the bodyshop, but I decided that I wasn’t going to let this car accident ruin my weekend. I had my 3-day festival pass purchased, hotel booked until Monday, and my friend was already in Vegas waiting for me. I couldn’t leave her there alone when we had already planned this trip together. So I continued driving there, side mirror hanging off and all.
That was Friday. On Saturday, the second day of the concert, I was suppose to meet with a guy I had been talking to. We had been chatting about hanging out at the concert together. He found me at the concert, and after 5 minutes of chatting he went off to get beers with his friends. I couldn’t find him anymore after that, and he wasn’t being responsive on text anymore. That made me really upset, and extremely emotional since I had been drinking. I remember standing in the middle of the crowd alone, drunk, feeling sorry for myself and crying because country music makes me even more emotional. I was separated from my friend at that point and couldn’t find her in the crowd.
After the concert that night, my friend and I reconvened at our hotel room and decided to go to the club. Within 10 minutes of entering Marquee nightclub, my new iphone was stolen out of my purse right away.
I freaked out and just couldn’t handle it anymore. I dragged my friend out of the club with me to try to find my phone through iCloud using her phone. I was so frustrated and drained at this point, and I kept telling her all I wanted to do was go home. She didn’t want to leave the club yet. We had just got there and she didn’t want to go back yet. We got into an argument. She was frustrated with me because I wanted to go home, and also I was, in her words, a train wreck the whole weekend. She tried to convince me to just go back into the club, have fun, and figure out my phone situation in the morning. But I was so tired and upset at that point, and I just was not in the mood anymore.
The last thing she said to me was “Ok I’ll see you back in LA,” and she angrily turned and left, and I watched her walk away from me into the crowd.
I cabbed it back to our hotel room alone, and stayed up until 5 AM Sunday morning trying to locate my phone because I couldn’t sleep due to the anxiety I was feeling. The iPhone finder app in iCloud showed my phone as offline. I called my friends in LA to open their “find friends” app and track my phone, which was futile as well. They told me, “when it rains it pours.”
At 8 AM, I woke up, hungover, feeling like crap, and feeling sorry for myself because my new car was damaged, my new phone was stolen, the guy doesn’t like me anymore, and my friend was upset with me.
I am still not sure why I decided to completely check out of our room that morning. I just felt compelled to intuitively go with my gut feeling, and I remember repeating in my head over and over, “it’s time to go, gotta go now,” as I mindlessly packed up my bags and left the hotel.
My friend still hadn’t returned back to our room yet. She was out all night. She later told me that day over text that she had met some new friends. If she had came back to the room earlier while I was still there, I probably would have not checked out because it would have been hard to ditch her and leave her in Vegas alone when we still had another night booked. I wanted to escape before she came back to the hotel so that I did not have to explain myself why I had to leave.
I found a T-Mobile store, was about to drop $800 for a new iPhone, only to find out there was something wrong with my bank account. I checked my accounts and realized that one of my credit cards had been stolen, and the person who stole it had started making charges on it the day I left LA on Friday. I had to use T-Mobile’s store phone to talk to my bank because I couldn’t buy my new phone yet, and therefore was stuck in the store for a long time at the counter, on hold for an hour with the bank, feeling extremely frustrated and violated.
I had 3 hours of sleep the night before and nothing was going right. It was just one thing after another, and at that point I was even worried that something was going to happen to me on the drive back home as well, at the rate my luck was going. I went to my grandparent’s house after I finally finished purchasing a new phone at T-Mobile, and fell asleep there for the rest of the day. I even contemplated catching Jason Aldean perform that night, but I was so exhausted emotionally and physically. I told myself I could always see Jason Aldean another day.
A little bit after 9 PM that night, I filled up on gas before I hit the road back to LA, tuned into satellite radio to listen to the concert being streamed live, and sent my friend a text. I told her I was listening to Jake Owen currently play at the concert through sirius xm, sad that I had to miss Jason Aldean, and that I hoped she was having fun. She had gone to the concert alone.
Little did I know that less than an hour after that, she would be one of the first ones shot, and I was never going to be able to see or talk to her again.
I was completely spared from experiencing the horror on Sunday night. There was absolutely no reason for me to have not been there for the Sunday show. I especially attended Route 91 because I wanted to see Jason Aldean perform.
I heard about the shooting right after I arrived back at home in LA, around 3 AM. I got the chills immediately when I heard, and realizing that all the unfortunate events that happened to me throughout the entire time I was there turned out to be blessings in disguise. I found at a few hours later that morning at 10 AM that my friend passed away.
Whatever stopped me completely from going to the show on Sunday was so profound, and it ultimately saved my life and completely spared me from even witnessing the horror.
However, the drastically different fate for my friend has been unsettling. I will never comprehend it. Yes, I am grateful to still be here. But everything that happened to me that weekend up until Sunday night has been haunting me. What is the universe trying to tell me?
Why was I completely sheltered and driven away from the concert that night, while my friend was one of the first ones to get shot and killed? Out of 20,000 people, 58 people died. Why her? The odds are so high. I remember how crowded and tightly packed the venue was, especially closer to the stage. She got shot in the few seconds before the music even stopped and people realized what was going on. And I had just left Las Vegas in the safety of my car, heading down the highway towards home. It is so bizarre.
Why were our fates so drastically different? People tell me I had angels watching over me, that it wasn’t my time to go. But why did it have to be my friend to go? It hurts so bad, and the last few months I have been trying to pick up the pieces, looking for answers and pretending everything is normal when it isn’t.
I felt the presence of something watching over me so profoundly that weekend. It wouldn’t go away, and it wouldn’t stop until I finally left Vegas. All the forces that came together that stopped me from going to the concert on the night of the shooting has changed the way I look at life, how real the energy is, and I believe there is something much greater than us out there now.
