Off-Duty Firefighter Saved Lives, Lost Friend During Las Vegas Massacre

Christopher Wetzel, a 38-year-old firefighter with Cal Fire's Riverside unit, was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas Sunday night with his wife and eight friends.

The country music concert became the scene of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history when Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd from a nearby high-rise hotel. More than half of those killed were from California.

Wetzel, a resident of Beaumont (Riverside County), was celebrating his recent birthday and had a room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino — the same hotel from which the shooter fired on concertgoers. It was the third time he and his wife, Amber, had been to the festival.

Some in his group, who were bigger fans of singer Jason Aldean, wanted to be up front, closer to the musicians. Wetzel and a few other friends were in a beer garden, about 50 yards back from the main stage, when the first burst of gunfire erupted.

Like so many others there that night, it was only when the second round of bullets rained down that he realized what was going on.

"I looked over and saw a woman laying on the ground, and I knew she was deceased right away," he said in an interview Thursday.

Wetzel grabbed his wife and told her to duck down, and together they hid under a table. The gunfire stopped momentarily again.

"I saw a man lying on the ground with what looked like a gunshot wound to the stomach," Wetzel said.

He and a few other people started tending to the injured man, but then the gunfire erupted again.

"We laid on top of him"

As his wife hid behind a wheelbarrow, Wetzel lay on top of the injured man to protect him from getting hit again.

"At that time it really kind of got scary. I started hearing the bullets whiz by me and I could see the crackling of the asphalt all around us," Wetzel said. "I think that was probably the one moment during the whole ordeal that I was kind of accepting that I was going to go."

The bullets stopped. As other people helped the injured man, Wetzel and his wife ran. But seconds later, there was another round of gunfire.

The couple saw a man, dazed and pale, stumbling around with blood pouring from his leg -- he had been shot in the backside. As Wetzel went to help him, he got separated from his wife.

"She was pretty much in 'one of the parents are gonna come home to our kids' mode," he said.

Wetzel and others put pressure on the man's bullet wound, while a nurse gave him an IV. Then they took the injured man to a triage area, where an ambulance rushed him away.

Right before the ambulance drove off, the injured man asked Wetzel for his name, promising to find him later.

Then Wetzel turned around and went back into the concert area to help others. Eventually, the gunfire stopped.

"We helped who we could," he said. "There was quite a few that we couldn't help that were already gone."

Ever since the shooting, Wetzel has scanned memorial photos of the people who died in the massacre. He remembers the faces of the people he helped. So far, their images haven't appeared.

A Friend is Killed

But one of his own friends at the concert that night did not make it.

Hannah Ahlers was near the stage when the shooting began, with her husband and a few friends. Wetzel was later told that she was shot in the head.

The 35-year-old Ahlers, also of Beaumont, left behind three children, ages three, 11 and 14. Relatives have described her as a "loving, caring and devoted mother."

Wetzel is now part of a community in mourning, focused on helping Ahlers' family.

On Wednesday night he attended a fundraising event for her husband and kids with other community members. Proceeds from a car wash this Saturday will go to Hannah's family – that event will be held at Set Free Church, 13700 Calimesa Boulevard, Yucaipa, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. And another member of Ahlers' family set up an online fundraiser to help her loved ones.

A Community in Mourning

In the days since the shooting, Wetzel and his wife have gotten little sleep -- concerned friends have been calling his phone nonstop.

Wetzel and his friends were among a number of off-duty firefighters, law enforcement officers and other public safety officials from California who  went to Sunday's concert.

There were a total of six Cal Fire employees at the concert that night, according to agency spokeswoman Janet Upton. One of them was injured -- and like many other off-duty firefighters, police and sheriff's department employees in attendance, they jumped into action to save lives.

But some members of the public safety community didn't make it. Rachael Parker, a 10-year-veteran of the Manhattan Beach Police Department, where she worked as a records technician, was killed in the hail of bullets.

Derrick "Bo" Taylor, a state correctional lieutenant who supervised inmate firefighters, is among the dead as well.

There wasn't a public safety conference in Las Vegas last weekend, so why were so many firefighters and law enforcement workers at the concert?

"Cops like country music," said Mike Durant, president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, which represents thousands of law enforcement officers in California and Nevada.

It looks like firefighters do as well. Wetzel said that many of his friends and colleagues like country music because it can take them away from some real-life problems.

"A lot of times we'll be at a fire station and there's country music playing on the radio," Wetzel said.

"Country music is one of those feel-good, have-fun type of things, and those festivals are just awesome. It's really good to take a break  from the work life and do stuff like that."