Las Vegas Shooting Victims Speak out for the First Time

Five victims of the Las Vegas mass shooting on Oct. 1 that killed 58 and injured hundreds more are speaking out in a new ABC News 20/20 interview. While some are coping with the tragic night differently, all say they are having trouble sleeping at night.

One woman felt her husband die on top of her in the midst of the domestic terror attack. Another woman says her blood pressure has been out of whack for weeks straight. One man has to hide in a closet when the images come rushing back.

Each victim seems to have come away from the tragedy with a sense of shaky unsafety and trauma. Read on to hear their stories.

Heather Melton

Heather Melton, an orthopedic surgeon from Big Sandy, Tennessee, says her husband, Sonny, a nurse, died on top of her while shielding her from the spray of bullets from Stephen Paddock’s gun. She dreams about him every night.

“I remember pretty vividly that [first night back at home after the shooting] having a lot of dreams about people trying to break into my house,” Melton told ABC’s 20/20. “Since then, I have dreams every night that Sonny — I know Sonny has passed, but he doesn’t. And so he keeps showing up everywhere. And he’s in my dreams every single night. And I keep hoping that he doesn’t realize that he actually has passed away, so that he stays.”

Mike Greenfield

Mike Greenfield was working as a stagehand at the Route 91 Music Festival that night. He said it took him about a “day and a half” to wash other people’s blood completely off his hands.

“I went to go see the doctor and he wanted to know what was going on with me. Not even like 30, 40 seconds into telling him, I start bawling. I start breaking down. I couldn’t get words out. I was just literally like a child that had been punished. I could not speak I just kept trying to gasp for air, and the doctor was like, ‘OK, I’m going to write this up for you.’

“What do we do in something like this? It’s very catastrophic and horrific. I’m just trying to get by. I never asked anything of anybody, but in the lifetime that I have left I don’t want to see this again.”

Dean McAuley

Dean McAuley is a firefighter who lives in Tacoma, Washington. He attended the music festival and once the shooting began, helped other first responders by attempting to save people.

“Sleep has been the hardest, just trying to get back to normal,” McAuley told 20/20. “Usually you know, you lay down at night to go to sleep like anyone else does in this country. [I] follow notes from my counselor — how to put good images in your head, how to work through some of the images that we saw down in Las Vegas. And usually a minute or two into it, I’m right back in Las Vegas. I’m hearing bullets. I’m hearing screams. I’m seeing faces, a lot more faces than I saw initially.”

McAuley says he’s having a hard time working through all the images and memories from Vegas because he’s used to dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy.

“It’s tough, because as a first responder, we usually show up after the scene, after everything is done. And this scene is a lot different. To be there in the midst of the terror and to see the faces and the screams is different than when we usually show up on scene as a firefighter,” he said.

“Once a week I go and see my counselor, and we talk about Las Vegas and talk about tools and techniques. I feel like I’m on the right track. You know, I feel like I’m doing the right thing. It’s going to take a while,” McAuley added.

Russell Bleck

Russell Bleck says he often hides in a closet when the nightmares hit. He says it’s partly in an effort to keep his fiancée shielded from his reaction, but it’s also a matter of feeling safe for him.

“I wake up from my dreams and just run down this hallway, into the spare room where I know Brea can’t see me. And I have a blanket and pillow from when I hide,” Bleck said.

“I’ll just run into this closet and shut the lights off and shut the door and put my body against so no one can’t kind of come in. I lock myself for hours,” he added.

“I run away from my fiancée. When I get upset, she relives it. When she gets upset, I can get her mind off from things. But when things hit me, there’s not that many people that can talk me down. It’s hard to let her see me like that, it’s not a matter of weakness, or looking like a badass or anything like that, it’s just a matter of security,” he said.

Bleck said he will work through the pain of being “broken” so that he can be whole in the end.

“I am 28 years old and I call my mom to feel better and hide in a closet. [If] you got do it, you got to do it,” he said.

Lisa Fine

Lisa Fine, a personal trainer and nutritionist, told 20/20 that her doctor and psychiatrist told her she needed to take some time off and take a vacation to deal with the post-traumatic stress. Fine says she needs to “be in nature and just really get away from technology and just breathe and relax, because when I went in [to the doctor] my blood pressure was 165 over 110.”

“And it’s been like that for weeks. And they had to give me some medication and just kind of tell me to calm down and that I’m not in any danger anymore,” she said.

Fine says sometimes it feels like she’s re-living the terror of that night all over again, and there are other times when it feels out of touch and “surreal.”

“I don’t sleep. I have not slept yet during the day. I get distracted by some things and I try to stay positive and focus on more incredible, you know, ways to be in life. Like we started [a non-profit called] Route 91 Strong with some survivors, and we also are wanting to give back to other victims and survivors of the tragedy,” she said.

Photo Credit: Twitter / @ABC