Brittany Aldean was in a nearby tent the night a shooter fired into the crowds of the Route 91 Harvest Festival where her husband and country star, Jason Aldean was performing. With 400 injured and 58 killed, Aldean and her husband admit they have both been immensely affected by the tragic events of the October 2017 incident.
“I still think about it daily, and I still shake when I think about it,” Aldean told PEOPLE.
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Aldean was pregnant with her son, Memphis, at the time, and shared that she feared she would never get to see her baby.
“‘It took me so long to have this child, and now I’m not ever going to meet him,’” she recalled thinking, referencing the year of in vitro fertilization treatments she underwent in order to get pregnant.
The mom of two originally opened up about the terrifying ordeal in an Instagram post after the shooting.
“When the gunfire started, I was not with Jason, but with some friends in a tent closer to Mandalay,” Aldean wrote in the Instagram post. “As you can imagine, my first instinct was to run to him and his was the same.”
“As we laid behind equipment onstage with some of our road family, bullets flying past… all I could think was, ‘I never even got to hold my baby,’” her post read. “We all made sure the others knew we loved them and then ran for cover where we stayed for the next couple hours. (Not knowing if there were multiple shooters, where the bullets were coming from… NOTHING).”
“We were the lucky ones,” she continued. “I can’t put into words the pain and heartache we feel for the ones who are no longer with us. May God be with their families and friends during this horrendous time. Each and every one of you are and will forever be in our prayers.”
One week later, Aldean and her husband went to the hospital to visit with victims, with Jason reflecting on the experience during this year’s Country Radio Seminar.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever done was go to Vegas and visit with a lot of the victims,” he said. “I was really glad we went there, but it was tough to sit there and see people who were at our show a few days before. To me, it was gut-wrenching. I felt a responsibility to go there and have some face-to-face time with them and laugh and cry — whatever they wanted to do.”
“I left with a whole new feeling about the whole thing, and I was so glad I went,” he continued. “It was one of those eye-opening, life-changing days that I’ll never forget.”
Aldean gave birth to Memphis in December 2018, and she and Jason welcomed their second child together, daughter Navy, in February.
Photo Credit: Getty / Jeff Kravitz
