Sonoma County couples shaken after mass shooting at Las Vegas concert

For Petaluma resident Kim Schubert, the sound of gunfire and screaming from Sunday night's Las Vegas mass shooting hasn't stopped.

Shaken, her voice raw with exhaustion and shock, Monday morning Schubert told of how she, her boyfriend Joel Wahl and Sebastopol friends Jen and Justin McGrath went from enjoying the three-day Route 91 Harvest Music Festival concert to being in the midst of the country's worst shooting massacre with at least 58 dead and more than 500 people wounded. The suspected shooter, a 64-year-old Mesquite, Nevada resident, shot himself to death and was found in a hotel room, according to police.

Late Sunday night, about four songs into headliner Jason Aldean's show, the foursome were in a VIP area, nearing the end of a long weekend of great music, Vegas fun and friendship.

“You started hearing popping sounds,” Schubert said. She feared it was gunfire. But her companions assured her it was fireworks.

“And then people just started getting shot next to us, behind us, in front of us,” she said. “We all just got down on the ground and started crawling. The shooting just kept going. Constant. It never stopped just kept going and going and going.”

At one point, on her own, she was hiding under bleachers with people still getting shot nearby. Her boyfriend, Wahl, a trained EMT who hopes to be hired as a law enforcement officer, had stayed in the crowd trying to help the wounded, she said. The McGraths had disappeared into the crowd, safely getting out of the outdoor concert venue.

Schubert called her 20-year-old daughter, Alexis.

“I was screaming and yelling and there were gunshots and she was freaking out,” Schubert said. “I told her ‘I'm hiding but I don't know if I'm going to make it. I just want to tell you I love you.'”

A call to her ex-husband passed on the same message to her younger son.

“I was crawling over people. I'm pretty sure they were dead. I had blood and dirt. I got trampled,” she said, now safe back in her hotel room.

After a few hours she and Wahl were reunited. The two couples were due to fly home Monday but instead now hope to rent a car.

Schubert hadn't slept all night and expected it would be awhile before that relief would come.

“You can't unsee that,” she said. “You can't unsee the screaming and people getting shot and people dropping like flies.”

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 707-521-5412 or Randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@ rossmannreport.