‘It was just raining:’ Iowa high school principal describes gunfire at Las Vegas concert

Scott Kibby heard a crackling overhead.

For a moment, the high school principal from Iowa City thought it was fireworks or feedback from a bad microphone on stage.

'There was a pause, and then it was just raining,” Kibby said. 'And it was continuous.”

Kibby and his wife, Kari, were two of reportedly 30,000 people who attended an open-air country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip over the weekend. A gunman in a high-rise hotel opened fire on concertgoers late Sunday during a performance by Jason Aldean, killing at least 50 and injuring more than 400 people.

The attack is one of the worst mass shootings in modern U.S. history.

Speaking to The Gazette on Monday from the Las Vegas airport, Kibby said he and his wife were seated in the venue's bleachers 'about a football field away” from the stage when the attack began.

'That's the north side of the venue,” Kibby said. 'We were about as far away as we possibly could have been.”

They had considered standing near the stage, Kibby said, but his left knee was bothering him so they walked back to the seating area.

Sniper-style gunfire rained down from the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino around 10 p.m. local time, police have said, at the close of the three-day country music concert. The concert grounds are adjacent to Mandalay Bay.

A gunman, identified by police as Stephen Paddock, 64, was found dead by officers on the 32nd floor of the hotel and casino

Police believe Paddock, a local resident, was a 'lone wolf” attacker.

When the attack began, Kibby's wife Kari was seated at the end of their bleacher row and pulled Kibby to his feet. Kibby said they ran north, running between food vendor trucks to escape the venue.

They ran inside the MGM Grand hotel, about a mile away.

'We hid behind a marble counter,” Kibby said. 'We didn't know if someone was following us.”

Soon, the hotel was put on lockdown. But when an alarm sounded, it jolted the couple, and they continued to scramble for new places to hide. Kibby said they moved to four or five different spots.

'We were so wound up from the concert,” he said.

Eventually, they found safety in a conference room. They stayed at the MGM Grand until about 2 a.m., when they left to return to their room at The Mirage hotel. They took an Uber car back, which had to take back roads to avoid the closed-off strip.

The couple's four-day trip to Las Vegas was a belated 30-year anniversary celebration, Kibby said. Liberty High School in North Liberty opened to students in August, the same month as their wedding anniversary.

The Kibbys had a scheduled flight back to the Cedar Rapids airport on Monday morning.

'Never going to be as happy to see Iowa as we are today,” Kibby said.

Susie Weinacht, a Cedar Rapids City Council woman, arrived in Las Vegas on Sunday afternoon for a few days of relaxation at the MGM Grand.

Weinacht said she was interested in attending the music festival, but was tired and decided to skip it. She learned about the attack early Monday morning when text messages began rolling in.

On Monday, security was guarding MGM's elevators to ensure only people with keys could access to hotel room levels, and all shows had been canceled, she said. Outside, she described an eerie scene of a nearly vacant Las Vegas Boulevard, smeared blood on sidewalks, abandoned hats, and other traces of the chaos the night before, she said.

'It hasn't hit me yet, but it will soon,” Weinacht said, urging Iowans to help by donating blood.

l Comments: (319) 398-8330; molly.duffy@thegazette.com

The Washington Post contributed to this report. Gazette reporter B.A. Morelli contributed to this report.