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Greeley woman shot, injured in Las Vegas shooting

Kelly Ragan
kragan@greeleytribune.com

Wanda Weinreich’s husband died three years ago this October. She hoped to take some time to celebrate life, move forward and have fun, so she went to Las Vegas to see a country music festival.

Weinreich, 53, of Greeley, heard three pops as Jason Aldean performed on stage. She thought it was fireworks. The pops weren’t very loud. Aldean continued to play, and she continued to listen. Then Aldean ran off stage. And then people started running, so she started running.

She later would feel an intense pain in her thigh without knowing what it was. She later would learn she was part of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Stephen Paddock opened fire and killed 59 people and injured 527 on Sunday night at the show. But first, she ran when others ran.



As they ran, an unseen shooter sprayed more bullets into the crowd. She could hear more pops. People yelled to get down.

Weinreich and the people around her got down. Then they got up again and kept running. As she ran, she felt an intense sting in her thigh, but she kept going. When they got down again to avoid the gunfire, Weinreich couldn’t get back up. An intense pain froze her to the ground. She looked down and saw her own blood coating her leg.



Some people off to her side lay motionless. She assumed they were dead.

Someone yelled at her to stay down, so she did. A man she didn’t know stayed there with her. He was trying to find his wife and kids, but he didn’t leave her.

Another man came up to her and tied a bandana around her leg to try to slow the bleeding.

More shots. Then a lull.

Another man helped carry Weinreich across the street. Others then tied a better tourniquet around her leg. Someone pulled up in the intersection and yelled at the men to help her into the car so they could take her to the hospital.

She’s one of the lucky ones, she said. The bullet went through cleanly. Doctors patched her up.

“There were people screaming,” Weinreich said. “Even when I was in the hospital people were screaming.”

From her hospital room, she saw a woman mopping the floor. The woman worked at it constantly. Every time she’d lift the mop up, it was covered in blood, Weinreich said.

It was eerie flying over the concert venue Tuesday morning to get home, she said. She could see the holes in the windows at Mandalay Bay hotel.

The whole thing seems surreal now, Weinreich said. No one expected to go to a country concert and leave with gunshot wounds. She expected to have fun, focus on herself and get back to work as a senior accountant at TLM Constructors, 3000 F St. in Greeley. She knows she’ll need time for physical and emotional healing.

On the way home, strangers on the plane came up to her and said they were glad she was alive. Friends and family kept her phone buzzing.

“I did have a lot of people who supported me and were willing to help and who did a lot of good,” Weinreich said. “There was evil, but there was also a lot of good. People pulled together.”


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