Douglasville police Lt. Brad Loudermilk took his wife Shelly to see her favorite singer, Jason Aldean, in Las Vegas at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival.
But what was supposed to be a birthday celebration turned deadly.
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The couple and two friends were at the concert when police say Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
“(Aldean) gets into his next song and just a volley of shots ring out,” Loudermilk told Channel 2 Action News. “At that point, we knew something was wrong.”
Loudermilk said attendees were lying on the ground and attempted to take cover from the gunfire that killed 58 people and injured hundreds of others.
The moments grew even more tense when Loudermilk and his wife were separated as she was filming the chaos on her phone.
“She tripped over somebody, she falls down” he said. “Her sister trips over somebody and falls down. I turn around and my wife's gone.”
Loudermilk was able to call his wife and rejoin her.
He told Channel 2 the gunfire lasted 10 minutes.
“We could tell the blast was coming in our direction,” Loudermilk told the news station.
He said since he didn’t have his gun on him, he “was just as helpless as anyone else.”
“You could hear the rounds skipping behind us, (they were) that close,” he told Channel 2.
Loudermilk is back in Atlanta, but he said his heart was with the victims: “It’s just sickening for the families.”
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