Las Vegas shooting survivor recounts escaping gunfire with wounded friend
Joseph Ostunio and his friend Kristin Babik were in the crowd at Route 91 Harvest country music festival when shots filled the air Sunday night.
"We heard what sounded like fireworks going off, but it just -- it kept going and going and going. We didn't -- we refused to believe it was gunfire and then when Jason Aldean went off stage, it was kind of clear something was wrong," Ostunio said. "People started screaming, hitting the ground and running. And we were just lucky we made it out."
Babik was hit in the shoulder, but they aren't sure exactly when she was wounded.
"She kept complaining that -- in her words -- she got hit by a water balloon. That's how she described the experience. She was hyperventilating," Ostunio said. "I thought she was fine, I thought she was just panicking, but when she started coughing up blood, I kind of realized that she'd been hit and she probably had a collapsed lung."
Initially they could not find the wound on her body. They agreed "the number one priority was to get outside of the venue," Ostunio said. So they hopped over a fence and escaped toward a nearby hotel.
"We actually went to a hotel right up here, up the street, and we checked her again and found a wound. And a good Samaritan who was a concertgoer, she's also a paramedic, helped us put her in a truck and then once we realized that the Strip was barricaded, we put her in an ambulance that we found on the side of the road," Ostunio said.
Ostunio said Babik will be fine, and he was told by the doctor that she'll make a full recovery.
In the deadliest attack in the U.S. since 9/11, 59 people were killed when gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on the concert from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. As CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reported, investigators found 23 guns and rifles in Paddock's suite along with two tripods and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Potential bomb-making chemicals were in his car.