It was just after 10 p.m. in Las Vegas when Krish Sidhu heard someone yell “shots fired.”
Sidhu, the founder and CEO of Hollywood-based Gillson Media Group and who was raised on the Semiahmoo Peninsula, had just left a networking event on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel to sit down at a poker table when people were all of a sudden running past him.
A lone gunman had just opened fire from his room on the 32nd floor of the hotel, spraying bullets from an automatic weapon into a country concert below.
Las Vegas police Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said that at least 58 people were gunned down and more than 500 were injured in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
READ: 58 killed in mass shooting in Las Vegas
The gunman was identified as “as 64-year-old, Stephen Craig Paddock, a white male from Mesquite, Nevada.”
Although the so-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, FBI officials said they had no intelligence to suggest any connections to international terrorist groups and Lombardo described Paddock as “a lone wolf.”
Sidhu described the panicked scene around him as “very crazy” as he and a group of about 30 people were shuffled into a lockdown area in the employee gym area of the hotel basement.
As they waited, a SWAT team broke into the gunman’s room. Lombardo confirmed that the 64-year-old was found dead, likely of a self-inflicted wound.
A few hours later, Sidhu and the others were transferred to an employee dining room and were held in lockdown from around 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Monday morning.
“In the first hour, we didn’t really know what was going on, but we all had phones, we were getting live feeds and the TVs were working so we could watch the news.”
Sidhu, who is staying at the nearby Palms Hotel, explained authorities were searching the entire Mandalay Bay hotel room by room before they could release anyone from lockdown.
While he describes the incident as “surreal,” Sidhu said the incident will not prevent him from travelling.
“You never expect such a random thing to happen, but it can happen anywhere at anytime.”
