LAS VEGAS — A Canadian man said he was terrified when he learned late Sunday that his wife was among the more than 500 people shot Sunday when a gunman rained bullets on people gathered in Las Vegas for the Route 91 Harvest country music festival.
Joseph Lambourne told CTV News Winnipeg that his wife, Jan Lambourne, made the trip south for the festival with her friend, Jody Ansell.
On Sunday night, while he was at work, he learned from his sister-in-law that Jan Lambourne had been shot. A short while later, he told CTV News Winnipeg, he started to get messages from his wife.
“She said, ‘I’ve been shot,’ and then she said, ‘I love you so much,’” Joseph Lambourne said in an emotional interview with the news station. “It scared the hell out of me.”
Ansell told CBC News that she was behind Jan Lambourne when a bullet struck her friend in the stomach. A short while later, Ansell felt the sting that warned her she had been shot in the arm.
"Everyone was running and stampeding like cattle, and I just had it in my head that I needed to get out of there — I needed to see my kids again,” Ansell told the news station. “I seriously didn't focus on nothing but getting out to go back to my family. That's all I had in my head is, 'I need to get home.'"
Ansell ran to try to get help from nearby motorists, she told the news station, and she and Jan Lambourne were separated.
>> Read the latest on the Las Vegas shootings
An Army medic took Jan Lambourne to a hospital, where she was initially listed in critical condition, her husband said. She has since been upgraded to stable condition, according to CTV News Winnipeg.
Joseph Lambourne told the news station that he and his son were flying to Las Vegas on Tuesday morning.
Authorities said at least 59 people were killed and more than 525 people were injured after a gunman opened fire on the 22,000 people gathered Sunday for the last night of the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas.
Police identified the shooter as Stephen Paddock, 64, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a sniper’s nest he had created on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay Hotel.