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A year in mourning: the story of survivors of the Route 91 shooting
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A year in mourning: the story of survivors of the Route 91 shooting
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Content
1
A Year in Mourning: The Story of Survivors of the Route 91 Shooting
Jaqueline McCool
Specialized Journalism
Master of Arts
University of Southern California
December 2018
2
Table of Contents
Title Page 1
Table of Contents 2
Dedications 3
Chapter 1: Life after Oct.1 4
Chapter 2: #58Strong 6
Chapter 3: More than Survival 9
Chapter 4: Fact, Fiction and Healing 11
Chapter 5: Sandy-isms 14
Bibliography 18-21
3
Dedications
To my committee, my parents and the Route 91 community; thank you.
4
Christopher Willemse twirls a warming beer between his fingers, reaching across his body with
his other hand to stroke his freshly inked arm. The tattoo spans from shoulder to mid bicep, an
intentional scar to remind him of the person and the day that changed his life forever.
The ever-expanding bird is in full color and accompanied by a Maple leaf-- with more to be
filled in. “Birds were kind of her thing,” says Willemse. His fiancée, Sandy Casey, had gotten
her own tattoo of a flock of birds after ending her first marriage. Willemse says that getting the
bird tattoo was supposed to represent freedom to Casey; now it does the same for him.
Casey was killed on Oct. 1, 2017, when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock shot from a 32nd floor
window of Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Bullets rained down on the crowd of
22,000 concertgoers at the Route 91 country music festival. The act left 58 dead and 500 injured,
making it the deadliest mass shooting in United States history.
The healing process for the Route 91 survivors has been an arduous one, riddled with signs of
post-traumatic stress, in-fighting and a dramatic push and pull between core beliefs and politics.
Since the shooting took place in October, the national conversation surrounding gun violence has
drastically changed. However, Route 91 wasn’t the focal point of the cultural change. The Route
91 survivors have intentionally chosen community over activism, a quiet year of mourning over
advocacy.
Even as national attention has shifted and new tragedies have captured the collective attention,
the Route 91 survivors want people to know they’re still here and they’re still healing.
Chapter 1: Life after Oct.1
The image is burned in Willemse’s mind— Casey in the bed of a stranger’s red pickup truck
experiencing her last moments of life in his arms. He doesn’t talk about it much, those final few
seconds. He’s only described them out loud a few times-- to Casey’s sister who insisted on every
detail, to a therapist, to himself.
He admits he spoke once to a reporter in a blurry haze. Unsure of what had made him pick up
that phone call instead of the hundreds of others rolling in at a constant stream, Willemse
unloaded the details of the whole ordeal onto what turned out to be a journalist from the
Washington Post. The story opened with the explicit anecdote of Willemse and friend Mike
Nolan carrying Casey’s limp body through the hail storm of bullets.
There are things that bring him back there, says Willemse-- to the Vegas desert, to running for
their lives, to Nolan and Willemse shielding Casey’s body with theirs. Listening to singer Jason
5
Aldean and driving Casey’s Jeep propel Willemse backward to a simpler time, cemented in
memory only moments before Aldean’s set at Route 91 began.
Willemse remembers Casey in a state of bliss during the star-studded line-up. Then the pops
started, which most concertgoers say they believed were fireworks. But Nolan and Willemse say
they knew. The two cite years of experience with guns that made the noise familiar. From that
point on, Willemse says his only thought was Casey.
When he recalls those moments, Willemse becomes quiet and restrained. He takes long sips of
beer searching for the right way to describe what happened. While he is typically warm with
nostalgia when remembering the details of his fiancée, thinking about those final moments fill
Willemse with a visible weight. He shifts in his seats and strokes his strawberry blonde beard
until the words tumble from his mouth.
Six months into their relationship, Willemse says Casey sat him down and told him he needed to
get over the anger he had been harboring. Willemse’s father killed himself when Willemse was
13, an event he says affected him and his outlook on life until he met Casey. Willemse describes
Casey as a driving force in changing his perspectives, something he has tried to maintain since
she’s been gone.
Willemse says, “The last thing she’d want me to do is be angry.”
He and I first met at a quiet diner in Manhattan Beach, walking distance from where he and
Casey worked and a 10-minute drive from their shared condo in Redondo Beach. At that time,
Casey’s things had remained untouched. Willemse still wasn’t ready to go through them.
“I can never have the life I had before,” says Willemse. “But I can live the same lifestyle.”
He’s measured when he speaks, only discussing Casey, her memory, life since life changed and
the anger he has been working to release. There is no precise mention of blame, not for any one
person, or any one thing. It seems that, to Willemse, this tragedy is another in the long stretch of
life’s unavoidable misfortunes.
He says on more than one occasion in varying words, “Grief sucks, but it is what it is.”
The first time I met Willemse it was Feb. 15, one day since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School shooting in Parkland, Florida. Former student Nikolas Cruz had barged into the school
with an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon, killing 17 people and wounding 14 others. The tragedy
captivated the nation’s attention in a way that the Route 91 shooting did not.
6
By that first meeting Willemse is already displeased with the way the Parkland shooting is being
talked about. Months later coverage of Parkland would continue, with student activists rocketed
to national fame, the creation of a March for Our Lives protest to promote gun regulation and a
nationwide campaign to register young voters.
We pass a newsstand as we walk to my car (Willemse insists on walking me there despite it
being a sunny mid-afternoon in a lazy beach town). He haphazardly gestures to a stack of papers
with stories from Parkland covering the fold. Willemse makes a quick comment about the
attention this particular shooting is getting -- he seems jealous of the amount of news this tragedy
has made and the way it is being discussed. I come to learn with the Route 91 community I spoke
to that activism is understood as attention-seeking.
Quickly catching himself, Willemse comes back to this story, why he has decided to speak. It’s
for Casey, her memory -- everything is.
Chapter 2: #58Strong
The Route 91concert, had an attendance of 22,000, making the reach of those affected
exponentially greater than previous mass tragedies.
Twenty-five of the victims were Southern California residents.
Hundreds of survivors and grieving families have filed lawsuits in California. The largest suit
brought thus far is made up of 450 survivors.
Eglet-Prince, the Las Vegas based law firm defending many survivors and families, believes the
blame falls on seven companies and corporations, citing hotel negligence and concert-site
negligence as the basis for the suit.
“Based upon our investigation to date, the following companies share responsibility for the
Route 91 Harvest massacre, and we are going to make sure they are held accountable for the
October 1 shooting: (1) MGM Resorts International; (2) Mandalay Corp.; (3) Mandalay Resort
Group, Inc.; (4) MGM Resorts Festival Grounds, LLC; (5) Live Nation Entertainment, Inc.; (6)
Live Nation Group d/b/a One Nation Group, LLC; and (7) Contemporary Services Corporation,
Inc,” says the Eglet-Prince website.
“We are seeking full and complete compensation for our clients against these companies, and
will not stop until justice prevails and changes are made so that these companies put safety above
profits.”
7
On July 18, MGM resorts filed a federal suit against survivors of the attack in an effort to
maneuver itself out of legal jeopardy. MGM says the shooting was an act of terrorism and that
the company, having used security certified by the Department of Homeland Security, did all it
could to prevent such an attack.
“This tragedy has brought about difficult and painful choices,” said an internal memo sent by
MGM Resorts. “Rest assured, MGM will continue to proceed with integrity and commitment to
the ideas and core values for which we have always been known for and which have defined us
for generations.”
The Route 91 Facebook pages were ablaze. Survivors did not hold back in the communication of
their anger -- to each other, to their friends online and to reporters.
Melissa Williams, a paralegal from Orange County and Route 91 shooting survivor, had created
the Facebook group #58Strong. It’s one of dozens of groups based around the Route 91 shooting.
Originally her group was created to organize an Angels baseball game in honor of the 58 people
killed, or as Williams refers to them, “the 58 angels.”
Williams becomes instantly agitated at the mention of the various lawsuits, something she
brought up herself. To Williams, joining one of the lawsuits is the ultimate betrayal of the
community she helped create, second only to “seeking attention” from the shooting.
When she first began organizing the Angels event, Williams imagined a small group of survivors
who maybe, if they were lucky, would be recognized by the stadium. But as she began to work
on setting up the event, the expectations and possibilities grew.
Before Williams realized, she had gained the support of her boss at Newport Beach-based
telecom firm, Mobilitie. Upon reflection, Williams believes her bosses’ motives had been selfish,
but at the time she welcomed the support to the growing project.
She took to the Facebook page she created to share the news: Her boss had offered to pay for all
of the tickets and merchandise for the families who had lost a loved one.
Weeks passed and the work mounted. Williams was coordinating with survivors, the stadium and
her boss, all while balancing her job and personal life. Three months before the event was
supposed to take place, Williams and her boss had a falling out. He would no longer be
supporting the event and she was fired.
Williams was terrified the community would disown her, that the event would fall apart and that
all of the work of her and the survivors would be for nothing.
8
"How could he do this?" Williams thought, "especially to the children."
Instead, the community rallied. Individual donations were made, families were sponsored and on
June 13, thousands of people showed up at Angel Stadium. They gathered in the middle of the
field, huddled and prayed.
“These people have become like my family,” says Williams.
Following the creation of #58Strong, the page quickly evolved into a place to share other
community events, stories of post-traumatic stress, frustration with news coverage of Route 91
and sometimes disagreements between survivors.
Williams says she believed the number of Route 91-oriented Facebook pages to be somewhere in
the hundreds, all private and regulated by different administrators. While the groups have been a
source of community, a way for people who are only connected by a tragedy to build a
foundation of friendship, they have not been without their own controversies.
Williams recalls a man who made his way into one of the groups, pretending to be a victim. She
says he was using the pages as a way to meet women.
The man was removed from the page, but with thousands of members spread over hundreds of
pages, others with insincere motives often slip through the cracks. Williams says lawyers and
journalists, as well as survivors have attacked one another within the page comments.
But where there are disagreements and bad apples, there is also a strong online community
offering support to those still suffering. Williams’ page, #58Strong has turned into a nonprofit
organization, raising money for the families of victims.
The Route 91 survivors haven’t come together over a shared passion for gun reform or
regulation; in fact many of the survivors remain staunch gun owners. Instead, the community has
evolved into something else entirely: a network of 22,000 people coming together in the shared
understanding of the worst day of their collective lives.
The Route 91 shooting was fundamentally different from the Parkland shooting and the way the
two groups created community influenced how the survivors and their healing was discussed.
Gun violence expert Deborah Azrael says the environment of the Parkland students created a
unique reaction to the tragedy. The Parkland students were all part of an already constructed
9
community. Azrael says the student’s age and socio-economic backgrounds changed how they
came together following the tragedy.
“Many people have this profound urge to have community around something terrible that’s
happened,” says Azrael.
The Route 91 shooting was unique in that it affected a dispersed group of people with nothing in
common other than a shared tragedy. The Route 91 survivors were not coalescing behind one
course of action or a pre-established group, they had to create commonality themselves.
In lieu of community space, the Route 91 shooting survivors have come together online, creating
designated events where survivors meet in person.
When asked if she considers herself or her friends activists, Williams brushes the idea off. “I
definitely don’t,” she says.
Williams hasn’t gone to therapy to talk about what she saw that October night. “I’m not going to
pay to talk to someone who wasn’t there,” says Williams. “I think that might be why people stay
in the [Facebook groups].”
Chapter 3: More than Survival
It’s May 12 and a group of survivors coordinated an event at Yorkshire Square Brewery in
Torrance, CA. It’s a fundraiser for victims with merchandise on sale, but it’s also one of many
similar events that have happened in the seven and a half months since the shooting.
There’s not just survivors in attendance -- it’s family, friends, coworkers, who have all come out
to support the community.
An unspoken understanding hangs in the air throughout the afternoon. For Willemse, there’s no
need to explain what has happened, no need to rehash the last months of his life, but he still does.
As the day winds down, Willemse is still greeting people. In between teary hellos he explains
people have been stopping by all day, that he’s gotten to know everyone pretty well, that this is
usually how these things go. He says they’ll probably move to another bar in a few hours.
There’s a certain level of calm to Willemse when he’s with the survivors. He maneuvers through
the bar like he is no longer weighed down by thought, a relief brought by shared experience and
understanding.
10
The change in Willemse from the first time we met is striking. It may be the people, the place,
the beer, or it might just be the new him.
Willemse’s friends exchange playful barbs in between bitter recollections. He oscillates between
telling the story of carrying Casey’s body through the crowd and introducing Nolan as “the
biggest degenerate of the bunch.”
Willemse’s friends continue to spar with him. “So you just kind of sit around and pick Chris’
brain?” they ask me.
“Pretty much,” I tell them.
The idea of Willemse saying anything profound seems to be the best joke of the night. Willemse
explains that Casey was the mom of the group, maintaining the balance between lighthearted fun
and out right tom-foolery. “She was the voice of reason,” he says.
Willemse and Nolan wear hats to honor Casey, just one of the pieces of merchandise they have
in commemoration. The black hat has an orange ribbon with a road sign that reads “91” in the
middle, next to the ribbon is a large purple sea turtle. Turtles were Casey’s favorite animal and
they’ve come to symbolize her for Willemse and his friends. The back of the hat says the word
“survivor.”
The two friends tell me the next version of the hat will have the word “warrior” inscribed
instead. They no longer like the connotation of the word survivor.
Perhaps it signifies too much weakness, as the men explain. Or maybe, the word doesn’t capture
the intensity that they feel. This hasn’t just been months of surviving it, it has been months of
fighting to get back to who they used to be.
The longing for how things were is present in every conversation, the drastic way each friend’s
life has changed just from knowing Casey and Willemse seems unmeasurable.
A few months back there had been a survivor event that Willemse couldn’t attend. A woman
approached Nolan and gave him a figurine angel for Casey. Nolan says he immediately burst into
tears.
That has to be the biggest day-to-day change Nolan has experienced, the emotion. He says he
never used to cry; now he does all the time. Nolan is naturally intimidating, a man who stands at
well above 6-foot, covered in tattoos; he says dealing with the lasting trauma of the shooting has
challenged everything he thought he knew about what it means to be a man.
11
“As a guy you’re taught to just push everything down and then push everything down again and
then pour some beer on it,” says Nolan.
Those are the times the community has been important to Nolan, dealing with the panic attacks,
the seemingly random triggers, the overwhelming feelings.
“It’s a community,” says Nolan. “Nobody has to ask if you’re in the corner having a panic
attack.”
But lately the Route 91 commitments have started to become too much for him. Nolan says he
wants to support Willemse, but with events happening at least once a month, if not more, Nolan
has begun to feel like he’s living in the past. He’s not ready to stop attending events all together,
but he toys with the idea of pulling back, maybe.
For almost a year Nolan has re-lived those moments at the concert, forever frozen in time on
Facebook. He is plagued by comments from distant friends or acquaintances tagging him in the
many videos of he and Willemse carrying Casey that night. It’s within the comment sections that
the men are hailed as heroes. This is a classification they’re particularly uncomfortable with.
Nolan fidgets, growing red talking about the countless times he has been tagged in one of the
videos. He understands the intention of friends who are trying to alert him, but watching the
memories back is painful nonetheless.
“It’s like slamming your hand in a door-- I know it happened,” says Nolan. “I don’t need to
watch a video of it.”
And just like that, Willemse gathers everyone to head to the next bar. With an electrifying
intensity, he is bargaining and encouraging everyone until he has gathered the full group to walk
across the vacant Torrance street. He is a constant mix of emotion, joy and sadness coexisting,
one feeling always fighting its way to the surface.
Willemse leaves the bar fading into the smog filled sunset surrounded by his new and old
friends. As he becomes just a shadow, the small script letters on the back of his head blur into
one. But I still know what it says: survivor.
Chapter 4: Fact, Fiction and Healing
All of the Route 91 survivors I spoke with reiterate the same variation of words: “It’s not the car
that kills people, it’s the drunk driver.”
12
The phrase “gun control” is never explicitly said, but abhorrence for it is alluded to. When asked
how she feels about guns, Williams simply says, “I’m a Republican.”
In this group, there are no speeches, no walkouts, no social movement.
In 2016, the CDC found 39,000 gun-related deaths. The data for mass shootings is not as exact.
The numbers vary from study to study, with no true academic consensus on what constitutes a
mass shooting.
In a comprehensive study done by Vox on gun violence in America, using a definition from the
Gun Violence Archive, the study defines a mass shooting as a shooting where four or more
people are killed or injured, not including the shooter.
The study reported 224 mass shootings in 2018 as of August, with 222 casualties.
Gun violence in America has been described as an epidemic, a contagion. But what happens
when the survivors of such a tragedy don’t agree? When they don’t want to be made symbols of
a movement? When they don’t want stricter gun regulations? When they don’t believe guns are
the problem at all?
Just days after he survived the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Nolan went to the shooting
range. Seven and a half months later and he was in the process of building his own AR-15.
Willemse never talks explicitly about his feelings on guns. He describes a long history of being
raised around firearms and when talking about that day, you get the feeling any questions he has
of “why” is directed at the shooter.
There seems to be some consensus in the community I spoke with that the stockpile of weapons
Stephen Paddock had are a slightly irrelevant part of this story. He was a troubled man; the hotel
didn’t catch it; his friends didn’t see it; no one stopped him before it was too late.
David Schonfeld, director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, has worked
with victims in Las Vegas. He explains survivors standing by their gun beliefs, saying it comes
from wanting to maintain control in inexplicable situations.
Schonfeld says a gun can often give someone a feeling of tangible control. “if it’s not going to
protect you, then what is?” he says.
13
About the idea that a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun, “People may wish there’s
something they can do,” says Schonfeld. He believes this notion is misguided, but also an
attempt to dissociate guilt a survivor might feel.
Schonfeld says the idea that something you care about could have hurt someone you love can
cause a person to become even more defensive of that thing. “If they believe what they’re doing
is wrong, they may believe they’re somehow connected,” he says.
For some survivors, admitting a gun is partially to blame for the tragedy would be like taking on
some blame his or herself, says Schonfeld. There are many factors that can attribute to those
defensive feelings, but Schonfeld says the need to safeguard beliefs can intensify, “People often
feel stronger about their beliefs after they feel traumatized.”
This rationale is lost on Williams.
“What people don’t understand,” says Williams, “is that the shooter was killed by a gun.”
On Aug. 3 the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department released its preliminary investigative
report on Stephen Paddock and the events of Oct. 1. While no motives were revealed the report
did definitively state that Paddock acted as a lone wolf.
“Paddock acted alone,” The report states. “Thousands of hours of digital media were reviewed
and after all the interviews conducted, no evidence exists to indicate Paddock conspired with or
acted in collusion with anybody else.”
The idea that Paddock was the only shooter that night should not seem wildly unfamiliar. It was
the accepted and widely reported fact of that day: The shooter acted alone, killing dozens of
people and then himself.
But that night on the Las Vegas strip the consensus wasn’t as easy. Video of officers entering the
venue show the police who thought there were multiple shooters inside the concert. Several
witnesses believed the strip was under siege, with all buildings on lockdown; there were
whispers of bombs hidden throughout the strip. Most thought they were living through a terrorist
attack.
When Nolan was covering Sandy’s body, he says he was also looking to see where bullets were
coming from. He believes he counted “seven flashpoints” in all.
14
In the comments on Willemse’s Facebook posts about that day, it is clear he does not believe
Paddock acted alone. Standing at the bar in May, Willemse and his friends begin to share
conspiracy theories.
No one can tell Willemse or Nolan that what they believe they saw that night is not what really
happened. Both men grow offended at the idea that their recollections are anything but the truth.
Willemse and his friends are not the only survivors who still feel this way.
Williams brushes off the theories. She acknowledges that it may be a part of the healing process,
but says ultimately, “it’s beyond me.”
But Willemse and Nolan are adamant. Every acknowledgement of previous reports is like calling
them a liar; it’s telling them that their firsthand account of survival isn’t what they remember.
“It’s hard when people keep telling you it’s not what you thought it was,” says Nolan.
Memories, Schonfeld says, can be tricky. He says in grief false memories can be reinforced.
Three days following the shooting Assistant Sheriff Todd Fasulo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan
Police Department said in a public statement, “I want to emphasize we believe Paddock is solely
responsible for this heinous act. We are aware of the rumors outside of the media and also on
social media that there was more than one assailant. We have no information or evidence to
support that theory or that rumor. We believe there was only one shooter and that was Stephen
Paddock.”
Chapter 5: Sandy-isms
Casey’s memory lingers over everything in Willamese’s life. The two were newly engaged, the
Route 91 concert tickets a surprise from Willemse to Casey.
He says he doesn’t blame himself anymore, that he can’t live his life that way. After the shooting
it took three months for Willamese to return to the school he and Casey taught at -- Casey as a
special education teacher, Willemse as an aide. Now, Willemse has decided to leave the school
all together, he says it is an attempt to focus on the “new him.”
With what Willemse describes as a bubbly personality and a heart of gold, Casey’s philosophies
on life have become so ingrained in the fiancée she left behind that he speaks through a series of
“Sandy-isms.”
15
He believes the children Casey taught are victims no one has talked about, left to rationalize a
senseless act and grapple with the loss of a mentor and friend. “They’re like the forgotten
children,” says Willemse.
In the months since shooting, Willemse’s greatest effort has been extending Casey legacy past a
number-- he wants her to be remembered as more than one of 58 killed.
A year after he proposed to Casey along the beach in New Zealand, Willemse returned on April
14. He took Casey’s ashes in a small wooden box with the carving of a turtle on top.
The inscription on the box was in quotations, “love you to pieces.”
Willemse shared photos from the day with friends on Facebook. In a post he wrote, “memories
make life worth living.”
When Willemse and his friends get together the memory of Casey looms over every toast or
corny joke. Doing things in her honor is Willemse’s new way of life -- to say there is not a day
that goes by that he does not think about Casey would mean you have met him for more than five
minutes. She is everywhere to him.
As the months have passed, Willemse has chronicled his grief one Facebook post at a time.
At Thanksgiving, Willemse visited Casey’s family in Vermont. Surrounded by Casey’s mother,
father and three sisters, Willemse set a place for Casey at the table.
Her family has been privately grieving as the year has passed. Except for Casey’s sister, they’ve
never asked for the details of Casey’s death from Willemse. He’s remained a part of their family,
an almost son-in-law.
In January, Willemse made his first trip back to Las Vegas to visit the sprawling memorials
erected in the victims’ honor.
On April 21 he ran a marathon in Casey’s honor -- something she had loved to do and he had
absolutely hated. Willemse held a flag with “survivor” written across the top and “Sandy Casey
Strong” below as he made his way to the finish line.
In July, Willemse donated Casey’s things to charity.
When we first met, Willemse told me that a lot of people have found comfort in his story. That
may be true; he’s been covered by local media extensively and he’s well-known throughout the
16
community of Southern California survivors. But it seems what people have really found comfort
in is Willemse himself.
He is so determined to honor Casey, so intent on remembering, that he has to give you hope that
a legacy can live on.
It may come from the fact that Willemse wholeheartedly believes Casey was too good for him;
that their love was a spectacular accident and that its ending was a terrible irony for something
that always seemed too good to be true.
Just over two weeks after the shooting, on Oct. 17, Willemse was in Casey’s hometown of
Dorset, Vermont, for her funeral. He reportedly told the crowd, “I loved her. She was my rock.
She was my soul, and now I have a gap to fill. That gap will never be filled. I will only live to
make her proud.”
Willemse told me he’s going to go back to school in January to get a degree in Marriage and
Family Therapy. He says if there is one thing he learned from Casey it was, “don’t be afraid to
jump.”
So for a year, he’s kept jumping, for Casey.
The list of things Willemse has done in Casey’s name is never ending and always growing. Only
Willemse would still use the word “degenerate” to describe himself now.
The survivors of the Route 91 shooting have formed a unique bond, spread throughout 50 states,
each with different backgrounds and beliefs, they have bonded through grief and maybe in spite
of it. A journey of mourning has created a community, that while not always perfect, tries its
hardest to be good.
Although he was never the country fan in his relationship, Willemse has been adopted by them.
Now he cites performers like Luke Combs in his Facebook posts. Willemse wrote, “Luke
Combs, "Used to you." It's as if he's in my head.”
Combs played the song two days after the shooting on Jimmy Kimmel Live, as a tribute to the
Route 91 survivors.
The song goes, “Cause letting go don’t come that easily/ Most of the time I can get by/ It’s just a
little hard on me”
17
“But I’m getting used to that old truck of yours/ Sitting out in the drive/ I’m getting used to you
not being there/ At church on Sunday night.”
“I’m getting used to the radio playing/ Without you singing along/ I’ll never get used to you
being gone.”
18
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
Mass shootings have become increasingly prevalent in American society, yet the way these tragedies are reported on and the way the stories of survivors are told has yet to change. The Route 91 shooting was the largest mass shooting in United States history, but some survivors feel forgotten in a 24/7 news cycle. Despite purposefully avoiding a path of activism, many Route 91 survivors wanted to share their stories of building community through tragedy. With major cultural shifts and personal healing, the survivors have navigated a year in mourning.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
McCool, Jaqueline Lee
(author)
Core Title
A year in mourning: the story of survivors of the Route 91 shooting
School
Annenberg School for Communication
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
Specialized Journalism
Publication Date
11/29/2020
Defense Date
08/29/2018
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Las Vegas shooting,mass shootings,mass tragedies,Mourning,OAI-PMH Harvest,Route 91 shooting
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application/pdf
(imt)
Language
English
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Electronically uploaded by the author
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Castañeda, Laura (
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), Azrael, Deborah (
committee member
), Medzerian, David (
committee member
)
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jaquimccool@gmail.com,jmccool@usc.edu
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etd-McCoolJaqu-6987.pdf
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108760
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McCool, Jaqueline Lee
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Tags
Las Vegas shooting
mass shootings
mass tragedies
Route 91 shooting