'All these thoughts start flooding in your head': Canadians recall chaos, horror of Las Vegas shooting

On Sunday night, Brandon Vanderloo was standing in a crowd of more than 20,000 people, watching country star Jason Aldeanperform on stage in Las Vegas.

All of a sudden, Vanderloo's partner Melissa said,"I think those are gunshots."

There was a bit of smoke. Some flashes. ButBrandon assumed something else was going on; this was the hectic Vegas strip, after all.

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But when one ofthe screens was hit, Aldean started running off the stage, and people in the crowd began sprinting towards safety."We got under the bleachers,"Brandon said. "I was laying on Melissa, and a couple other people."

There, peeking through to see what was going on nearby, a thought raced through his mind:If they made a bad decision, the couple's two children four and six years oldmight not have parents anymore.

"We didn't know what was going to happen," Melissa said, her voice trembling, on Monday night at Pearson airport.

"We're laying there with people, holding each other's hands under the bleachers, don't know if we're going to live or not and thinking about the kids."

'It was chaos after that'

After hosting an e-sports championshipon Saturday, Canadian broadcasterArdacalwanted to explore the bustling downtown strip.

He strolled through the area a maze of sidewalks and escalators, connecting to hotels and casinos with two fellow Canadians on Sunday night. Then,cal headed insidethe Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

That's when a team of security guardstold the trio to stay put: There was an "active shooter situation."

"It was chaos after that," recalledcal, who currently lives in New York,in a phone call from the Newark, N.J. airporton Monday.

Trapped inside the resort, people started hiding under food court tablesand inside public bathrooms, while a stampede of others barged through a set of doors "with the fear of God on their faces."

And as security officers began directing people toward a parking lot outside,calnoticed a red liquid on the ground. He assumed it was red wine.

It wasn't.

Outside in the parking lot, a man showed cala Snapchat video of the deadly shooting that was underway.

Butitdidn't capture the full reality of what would soon be known as the worst mass shooting in modern American history: 59 people dead, including threeCanadians. 527 injured. And thousands more who narrowlyescaped the hail of gunfire from a shooter on the32ndfloor of theMandalayBay hotel.

While cal was waiting in the lot,unaware of the danger above, asecurity guard approached the group and told them they were within sight ofthe shooter. People began to flee the area, he said, including a mother holding her child in her arms.

Raised in Oakville,calsaid he never grew up fearing a mass shooting."All these thoughts start flooding in your head: How many [shooters] are there? How many people are injured? How many people are dead? Is the active shooter going to burst through these doors at any second and shoot at people in this area?" he recalled.

cal and his associates headed north to the T-Mobile Arena to catch a taxi and he said their cab driver hadn't heard what was happening around them until they told him about the chaos.

"The taxi driver literally said,'You guys are my last fare. I'm going home.'"

'He probably saved our lives'

Bodies lying on a field, covered in sheets.

That's what Chris and KimberlyBattagliasaw from theirLas Vegas hotel room on Sunday after escaping the carnage on the ground.

Earlier that night, thecouple were 20 rows from the stage at a country music festival when the shooting began.

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At first the pop, pop, pop sounded like fireworks, butpeoplequickly started climbing over fences and hiding behinddumpstersto escape the hail of gunfire from above.

Running as far and as fast as they could the pairjoined dozens of others inside a hangar at the nearby airport, ushered in by a security guard.

"He probably saved our lives," KimberlyBattagliasaid after returning to Toronto.