When a country music concert in Las Vegas turned into a killing field, Seattle Scotty Pettersen helped so many gunshot victims that he lost count.
As the bullets hit hundreds of people, 27-year-old Pettersen ran his girlfriend and a nearby family to the safety of an ambulance.
Paramedics were helping others, but there were four gunshot victims in the ambulance. Pettersen’s EMT and firefighting training began.
“I grabbed gauze, got bandages and started wrapping one guy, and another guy came up and got shot in the back, and I started wrapping him,” Pettersen told KIRO-TV in Seattle, just a few days after the massacre that left 58 dead. people on October 1, 2017. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in US history.
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While Pettersen was helping the man with the back wound, a woman who had been shot in the thigh appeared “bleeding all over,” Pettersen said. “Two seconds later a man comes in with a shoulder wound. Another five seconds a lady comes in with a neck wound.
“It didn’t stop,” he said.
Pettersen treated victims until he was “head to toe” in their blood and the ambulance ran out of supplies.
He may have helped save a dozen or more people.
Just over three years later, Pettersen, unable to get help on his own, died by suicide on January 18, 2021, at the age of 31.
Now, on that night’s five-year anniversary in Vegas, Pettersen’s parents search for one of the strangers who helped save their son.
“We need to find all the good that Scotty has brought to this world because it was such a traumatic and dark end to his life and that’s what we have now,” his mother, Michele Pettersen, said this week. “If there was a life he saved, what a bright spot.”
On September 6, Scott and Michele Pettersen scattered some of Scotty’s ashes in Maui, the last place the whole family gathered. That same day, they posted a plea to a Facebook group designed to connect the many everyday heroes of the Vegas shooting with the people they helped save.
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“We are looking for survivors who were treated by our son, who drove an ambulance to rescue and protect his girlfriend, and during that time treated many gunshot victims who needed help,” the message reads. “His name was Scotty. We lost him to suicide several years after the concert. Today is his father’s birthday, the day we also placed Scotty’s remains in his final resting place on Maui. If you have any information, we would be eternally grateful to you.”
So far, the post has not surfaced from any of the people Scotty has helped. His parents hope that his large size, good looks and other unique details can bring back some memories.
That night, the 6-foot-1,200-pound Scotty wore a Hawaiian short-sleeved button-up shirt with green leaves and pink flowers. He also had a distinct tattoo, an intricate sleeve that ran from his right elbow to his shoulder.
Pettersen treated people in an ambulance parked outside the Mandalay Bay hotel and was with his blonde girlfriend.
The Facebook group the Pettersens have turned to for help has connected dozens, if not hundreds of survivors.
Robert Aguilar of Fontana, California, has become close friends with the Michigan man who saved his life after being shot in the ribs in Vegas, temporarily paralyzing him, and sent him through months of physical therapy and recovery.
Aguilar was also able to connect with the woman who took him and his then-girlfriend to the hospital when every second mattered.
Before he could thank them, “that weighed on me a lot,” Aguilar said.
“I was in the military and I never got hurt like that,” he said. “To go to a concert where you can’t protect yourself or who you’re with because of something like that and then let people do what they did… I had to talk to them.”
People who survive a traumatic event like Vegas can find healing by talking to other survivors, said Tennille Pereira, director of the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center, which connects shooting victims with mental health services.
“We’ve had people go back to the UK and they’ll contact us and they’ll say, ‘I feel so isolated. I need to connect with someone who would understand this,'” Pereira said.
Unfortunately, she said, not everyone seeks or accepts help.
Scotty Pettersen never did.
“We begged him for help and he didn’t,” said Scott Pettersen. “Scotty was the life of the party. He was the one who turned everyone’s head when he entered the room… So in everyone’s minds he’s Scotty, he’s moved on, he’s fine. And I believe everyone is thought, but I can’t imagine being in the situation he was in and not trying to talk to anyone.”
Scott and Michele said they had no idea how much Scotty was struggling and saw no signs of suicidal thoughts. They strongly suspect that he was haunted by what he experienced in Vegas.
“The faces, I remember them,” Scotty told KIRO-TV. “The guy who was shot in the back, I know exactly what he looks like, and when I close my eyes, that’s what I’m thinking about.”
Aguilar said he also had suicidal thoughts after the shooting and eventually got help with therapy.
“There were many days when I thought there was no reason to be here on this earth anymore,” he said, explaining that in the months and years following the shooting, he felt guilty as a survivor.
The Pettersens said their son had experienced something similar. He could never bring himself to look at the photos of the deceased victims, they said.
“He was afraid to look them up and see the face of someone he supported because he might not have saved them. Maybe he wasn’t doing enough,” said Michele Pettersen.
But she and her husband are convinced that Scotty made a huge impact that day.
“Maybe we can find some of the goodness and a person he helped save because we couldn’t save him,” she said.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for those in crisis or those who want to help someone else. Call 1-800-273-8255 to speak with a certified listener.
Crisis Text Line is an emotional crisis support texting service. To speak to a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It’s free, available 24/7 and confidential.
If you were affected by the Las Vegas shooting, the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center can connect you with a trauma-informed therapist, help you participate in peer support, and connect you with healing activities. To schedule an appointment, call us at 702-455-2433 or email [email protected].
Scott and Michele Pettersen started with a $1,000 annual grant to help fund the training of an aspiring first responder. They fund the scholarship themselves, but accept help with https://www.gofundme.com/f/scott-a-pettersen-memorial-scholarship.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Parents of Las Vegas Mass Shooting Heroes Search for People He Saved
