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Five years after a lone gunman opened fire from a Las Vegas hotel on a country music festival crowd, there is little comfort and no answers to what triggered the massacre of scores of people — the worst mass shooting America had ever witnessed.
Today, a memorial at the northeast corner of festival grounds that turned into a killing field is still in the planning stages by Clark County government officials, who hope the victims of the Oct. 1, 2017, bloodshed are never forgotten.
The memories of that carnage still haunt country music executive J.R. Schumann.
“Run for your life! As fast as you can!” he screamed as the inexplicable shooting spree unfolded at the Route 91 Harvest festival on Oct. 1, 2017, the former SiriusXM exec recounted in an exclusive interview with The Post.
Schumann managed to dodge the gunfire and protect his employees backstage as the bullets flew while country singer Jason Aldean performed the final show at the three-day festival.
At the end of the gunman’s rampage, 58 concertgoers were dead and 869 others wounded.
There is likely never going to be a known motive. Shooter Stephen Paddock, 64, killed himself in his 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino.
Schumann said he “didn’t even know it was gunfire at first,” recalling the spray of bullets onto the stage exploded like a “sonic boom” followed by a “high-pitched crack.”
Confused and frightened, Schumann said he called his boss when the gunfire stopped for a moment — then seconds later screamed: “Oh God, it’s still going on!”
He hung up to get himself and his team to safety, he said — and tried to call his mother, aunt and uncle. No one answered.
SiriusXM’s engineering team was recording Aldean’s performance to replay it on the popular country music station, The Highway. Instead, Schumann and his team spent days after the massacre working with Aldean’s camp to get the audio of the shooting handed over to the FBI.
The recently released docu-series “11 Minutes” detailing the horrific events of that night features SiriusXM host Storme Warren, who was inside the festival grounds along with Schumann and their SiriusXM crew members.
