Hastings doctor and Las Vegas shooting survivor reflects on one year anniversary of massacre

“It was surreal. It was just chaos we didn’t know where it was coming from what was happening.”

It was supposed to be a fun night of country music, but it quickly turned into a nightmare for Hastings doctor Barry Bohlen, his wife, and the three others they were with.

Thousands of people were gathered near the Mandalay Bay Hotel for the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival.

It’s an event Barry and his family had attended several times previously, but last year while dancing to Jason Aldean bullets began raining down on the crowd.

“It just felt like this big roar that was just bullets hitting everything metal ground,” said Bohlen.

In the desperate attempt to find shelter Bohlen and his wife were separated from the three people they were at the festival with.

“We got down and crawled to the end of the stage away from it and got underneath the stage. I can’t tell you how long I was there.”

Bohlen, an orthopedic surgeon, and his wife, a nurse, both crawled out from under the stage and began helping the injured.

Natalie Grumet from California was one of the people Bohlen helped save, and in the year since the shooting the two families have formed a close friendship, visiting each other a handful of times.

Even as wounds like Grumet’s have begun to heal, Bohlen says the shooting is not something he will ever forget saying he’s thankful to be alive, but still struggles with survivor guilt.

“I think the last three months have been the hardest because it sets in that 58 people aren’t here with us.”