Vacationing Amityville nurse sees Las Vegas carnage up close

Krystal Legette, a nurse from Amityville, had hoped to spend her 36th birthday Sunday viewing the glittering lights of Las Vegas on an after-dark helicopter tour of the city.

Not long after a limousine dropped her at an office building near McCarran International Airport for her helicopter trip, a man with a machine gun changed everything.

Music fans, who, like Legette, were in a celebratory mood minutes before at a nearby country music festival, frantically burst through the doors of the office building. Some were stunned, others were wounded. All sought shelter from a shower of high-caliber bullets fired out of the window of a room at the Mandalay Bay hotel.

“People ran in screaming, crying, bleeding,” said Legette, a critical care nurse who mostly treats people with respiratory issues. “People were looking for their friends. There was blood everywhere.”

Legette never took that helicopter ride. Instead, she used her medical training to help and comfort the wounded, even as she suddenly feared for her own safety.

“We were all hysterical,” she said. “We didn’t know at the time if the shooter had been caught.”

Several people carried a woman with a gunshot wound to the arm into the building. The woman was bleeding profusely, Legette said, so she and others rushed to the victim’s side and applied a tourniquet to her arm to stem the blood flow.

Amid the chaos, an employee cut the lights and locked the doors, Legette said. Left to worry and wonder whether they were next was Legette and more than 100 others crowded into the now pitch-black helicopter waiting area.

For Legette, a dream vacation amid the craziness of the Las Vegas Strip and topped off with a view from above, turned in an instant to a frightening nightmare playing out in real time.

Legette said she arrived from New York Thursday and checked into the Excalibur Hotel & Casino, a bit less than two blocks north of the concert site. She visited nightclubs and did some gambling. At one point, Legette said, she walked past the Route 91 Harvest Festival, the three-day concert featuring country music stars. Legette even got into the mood, she said, buying a cowboy hat and mulling over whether to join the fun at the concert.

Instead, she decided to take a helicopter ride. Her decision possibly spared her life but couldn’t shield her from the carnage unleashed by the shooter.

“It was really like a movie,” Legette said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Eventually, Legette said, she and the others were ushered out of the building and into a van, and were driven to a safer area. Volunteers passed out blankets, cheeseburgers and French fries.

Early Monday morning, Legette walked back to the Excalibur to get some sleep.