Marine veteran Taylor Winston and his girlfriend Jenn Lewis were dancing the two-step at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival when gunfire rung out. The pair didn’t know it at the time, but they were in the middle of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. But instead of running away, Winston helped get over two dozen victims to safety and to hospital.
He said when the shots got louder and closer to them and they saw other people getting hit by bullets, they ran towards the fence to escape. Winston helped “throw a bunch of people over” and then himself. He told CBS News, “It was a mini war zone but we couldn’t fight back.”
Instead, Winston saw a bunch of white trucks and decided to see if any had keys in them. The first one he tried did. That’s when he started to search the crowd to see who needed to get to hospital. He said he was overwhelmed by the number of people and the blood.
“I think a lot of my training in the military helped me in the situation. We needed to get them out of there regardless of our safety,” he said. But he and Lewis managed to load some of the critically injured people into the stolen truck and raced to hospital, getting there before ambulances had even arrived on the scene. He then went back for more. All and all, Winston says he transported probably 20 to 30 people.
Although many are calling him a hero, he rejects the label, saying he saw many people like him doing brave and courageous things to save lives. Winston recounts the events of that night in the video below.
Winston also expressed his gratitude for everyone’s kind words. He wrote on Facebook, “I deeply appreciate all of the love & support that I’ve received over the past few days. I am fortunate enough to not be injured or killed. I could’ve just as easily been one of those victims but thankfully I was not. We need to turn our attention to the friends and families who are in dire need of our help and prayers…Thank you for allowing me to spread light & love during this dark time. I’m not a hero, simply someone who was able to help others in need, as there were many others who did so too that tragic night in Vegas.”
No matter what he says, what Winston did was heroic, and no doubt helped save lives. Share what he did to help spread the “light and love”.
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