Taylor Winston, an Iraq war veteran, tole a truck to rescue dozens of people during the tragic Las Vegas shooting.
Winston, 29, was close to the stage at the Route 91 Harvest festival, Sunday, when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock open-fired from his Mandalay Bay hotel room window. Winston, a marine who served in the Iraqi war, and his girlfriend Jenn Lewis immediately sprung into action.
As the gunshots began, the Iraq veteran helped people scale the perimeter fence, before ultimately tearing down the fence entirely to help people escape. Winton called the scene a “mini war-zone” except they “couldn’t fight back”.
“The shots got louder and louder, closer to us and saw people getting hit, it was like we could be hit at any second,” Winston said to CBS News. “Once we got to the fence, I helped throw a bunch of people over, and got myself over. “
After quickly assessing the damage and realizing there was a limited number of ambulances, the former Marine sergeant took it upon himself to transport victims to the hospital. Winston and Lewis found an unattended truck near the venue with keys still inside and used it to transport the wounded to a nearby hospital.
via The Daily Beast:
“Jenn and I luckily found a truck with keys in it and started transporting priority victims to the hospital and made a couple trips and tried to help out the best we could until more ambulances could arrive,” Winston said.
A designer for the Country Rebel social network, Winston has been to country music festivals before and said he figured one or two work trucks would still have the keys inside. “So I just crossed my fingers and it turned out to work out,” Winston said.
In two trips, Winston and Lewis said they transported about two dozen people to the hospital. Victims were piled into the back seat and truck bed. Winston told people to apply pressure to the wounds, as he sped to Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center, wanting to get people there “before they bled out.”
Winston, who joined the Marines at age 17, served two tours in Iraq before being honorably discharged as a sergeant in 2011. He returned the keys to the owner of the truck Monday night.
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