Jonathan Smith may have saved the lives of 30 concertgoers after a gunman opened fire at a Las Vegas music festival on Sunday. Smith was in the city for his brother’s 43rd birthday. They celebrated by attending the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival.
As of Tuesday evening, 527 people attending the concert were injured and 59 died as a result of the shooting.
“I ran back toward the shooting,” Smith, a father of three, told ABC News.
According to the network, Smith formed a human chain of about 30 people and instructed them to duck behind a row of cars. When he noticed a group of girls wasn’t entirely concealed by the vehicles, he went to ensure their safety. During this act, he was shot in the neck.
“I got a few people out of there,” the 30-year-old told the Washington Post. “You could hear the shots. It sounded like it was coming from all over Las Vegas Boulevard.”
“I decided I wasn’t going to leave anybody behind,” Smith told NBC News. “I didn’t want to die here.”
Smith, who was also with his nieces, lost track of his family during the shooting, but they were all able to find each other. No one in his family died in the shooting.
Not only is Smith facing the possibility of living with the bullet inside of him for the rest of his life, he also has a fractured collarbone, bruised lung and cracked rib. A GoFundMe page
created for Smith’s medical expenses aimed to raise $7,000 for the hero. Within less than 24 hours, the campaign raised over $32,000.
“I don’t deem myself as a hero,” he told ABC. “I just deem myself as someone that was doing the right thing.”
