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Vegas shooting hits close to home for Nakusp family

Nakusp woman had attended Route 91 Harvest country music festival for last three years.
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Tammy Hascarl, centre, with son Dylan and daughter Danielle. The shooter’s hotel can be seen in the background. (Submitted)

The horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday hit close to home for a Nakusp woman.

Tammy Hascarl and her family had attended the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in the Nevada city for the last three years.

“We were just devastated, it was shocking,” says Hascarl, who works at a realtor’s office in Nakusp.

On Sunday night, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd at the music festival from the 32nd story of a nearby hotel, killing at least 58 people and injuring more than 500 others. There’s no known motive for the shooting.

RELATED: B.C. man one of two Canadians killed in Las Vegas shooting

Hascarl said she went to the first Harvest festival three years ago, and every year since. The videos shared online from the scene of the shooting are from familiar places.

“When you see where people are jumping over fences, I know exactly where that is,” she told the Arrow Lakes News. “In one video that was actually a place we were sitting. I have pictures of us with the Mandalay Bay Hotel [the shooter’s hotel] in the background.”

And while they almost went again this year, she says last year’s event turned them off.

“There’s just so many people, people got kind of rude, it was not our kind of thing,” she said. “At first it wasn’t like that, but it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. Just too many people and people would not be very nice. They’d get in your face about things.”

After that experience, they decided not to go. And now she’s thankful she didn’t.

RELATED: B.C. couple ‘shaken but unharmed’ following Vegas mass shooting

“We are incredibly grateful. We were there with our kids, and our sister-in-law last year, and our son’s girlfriend,” she said. “We had thought about going this year again, but just thought ‘no, let’s go another time.’”

Two Canadians are confirmed dead in the shooting, a man from Maple Ridge, B.C. and a woman from Alberta.