HALTOM CITY, TX (KTVT/CNN) - A man staying just two floors below the Las Vegas shooting suspect says he had trouble alerting authorities where the shots were coming from. Army veteran Chris Bethel heard every shot so clearly that he thought they were coming from his floor, and maybe even next door.
Bethel says he tried to call 911, the hotel's front desk, and even a hotel across the street, but got no answer. He finally got through to 911, and told the dispatcher the shooter was in the hotel. Now he can’t help but feeling guilty for not saving more lives, although he knows he’s not.
"The hardest part about it for me is feeling like I couldn't do, I couldn't get a hold of somebody fast enough. There's a lot of guilt I feel. It kind of eats me inside in the sense like it's almost my fault. I know it's not, but it's a feeling I can't control,” he said on Tuesday.
He added that although the shooter was not on his floor, the violence of the gunshots made him think that he was. “When you hear the gunshots going off, the walls are shaking, I was texting my friends and my family and it seems like it just never stops,” he said. “Your seconds are going by, minutes are going by and the rounds are continuously going. Changing weapons, changing calibers, I mean you can hear the difference in the gunshots of the different rifles that he's shooting and you just feel helpless."
Bethel is back home in Texas and says he has not been able to eat or sleep since the shooting. Although he’s a veteran, he says his training didn’t prepare him for something like the shooting.
"You do feel like none of, none of your training you've experience could ever prepare you for something like this. Ever. I mean. Perhaps the you know your, your daily officers that are in the line of fire. They do the training,” he said. “God bless them. It's, they're the ones that obviously deserve all the credit.”
He says he has served in war zones and they don't compare to the horror of the massacre he witnessed. He said he thought the shooter was as close as next door to his room.
"Police cars were coming to the concert. They were parking. They were going to the concert. I don't, I don't think they knew that the shooter was in the hotel,” he said. “And that's where I was trying to get a hold of somebody and let them know. He's not over there. He's over here. I thought he was next door. I, I seriously thought he was next door."
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