LAS VEGAS -- Paul Gallegos says he doesn’t even like country music. His wife and three grown sons disagree, and convinced him to go to the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas.
When gunfire erupted, the family got separated. Paul and his wife Jamie Lynn Gallegos made it to their truck with no sign of their three sons.
“There were people falling in the street that were running behind us and we could see them as we were driving out,” Jamie Lynn Gallegos said.
Paul stopped the truck three times, letting people jump in the back to escape the bullets raining down from above. Three people with bullet wounds were loaded into the bed of the truck.
“I don’t know how badly they're hurt, but I have to get them help as fast as I can,”Paul Gallegos recalled.
He drove them all to safety, finding a team of paramedics two blocks away.
“We got them there first, there were no other victims there,” Paul Gallegos said.
The three people with gunshot wounds in the back of his truck were among the first to get medical treatment. One of them is a close personal friend of Jeff Germain of Saint George. Germain had made a vow from the hospital to try to find the people who saved his friend’s life.
“Just started looking through every post I could find on Las Vegas and shooting and people saving lives,” Germain said.
Thousands of posts and images later, he saw a response by Paul. It read: “We're almost positive this is one of the ladies we took to the paramedic down the street.”
Jeff broke down in tears describing the moment he was finally able to thank Paul and his wife Jamie Lynn.
“I just want to tell him thank you from the bottom of my heart," Germain said. "Without him I don’t think our friend would be alive."
The relief was equally felt on the other end of the telephone call.
“Every day has been a struggle, but knowing that one person survived and we helped make that difference just made it a little bit better to bear things," Jamie Lynn Gallegos said.
A Facebook post by the daughter of the woman who was shot indicates she will be moved out of the ICU on Thursday and is on a long road to recovery. A result, helped in part, by a complete stranger.
“It makes me feel like there was a purpose why I was there,” Paul Gallegos said.
