Woman survived Las Vegas and San Bernardino mass shootings
A California woman who boasted that she was the safest person to be around after surviving one mass shooting, survived lived through another one this week.
“Active shooter,” Melissa Castruita wrote to her fiance J.C. Monticone during Jason Aldean’s set at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Sunday evening — which she was attending with her aunt and cousin to celebrate her 34th birthday, The Los Angeles Times reported.
“I’m so scared!!!” she wrote as shooter Stephen Paddock gunned down concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. “Do you hear that? They took Jason [Aldean] off stage.”
“People are running out,” she added.
Monticone, 36, who was at the nearby Luxor Hotel & Casino with his buddies, immediately began looking for his fiance.
He recalled the last time Castruita sent him that same text — on Dec. 2, 2015, when she was working at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, where a government worker and his wife killed 14 people and then died in a gunfight with police.
Castruita never expected to encounter a second mass shooting, and had even told her family she was the safest person to be around, the paper reported.
Monticone called Castruita — telling her he was coming, but she urged him to stay behind in his room, according to the report. Still, Monticone, a paramedic with the South Pasadena Fire Department in California, continued on — and even helped several other wounded concertgoers on his way, he told the paper. His arms, hands and clothes were soaked in blood, according to the report.
After carrying a woman with a gunshot wound to her leg to a triage center, he was determined to keep going, until he found Castruita unharmed inside the MGM Grand.
“I needed to get to Melissa,” he told the paper.
Just like they did two years ago, the two embraced.