Las Vegas Tragedy Hits Home for Hudson Valley Residents

When something like this happens, I always have a mixed reaction. First is disbelief, usually followed by anger and then sadness.

Las Vegas has always held a special part of my heart, not because it's called Sin City, but because it's where I asked my wife Jamie for her hand in marriage. I remember it like it was yesterday, bringing her to the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel, getting down on one knee and stumbling through my words ending with "will you marry me?" Still till this day I'm shocked she said yes.

So when I heard about the tragic shooting that took place early Monday morning that was the first thing that popped into my head and then quickly it turned to disbelief. Hoping that it wasn't true, but it was in fact true: 50 people dead and 400 injured all while attending a country concert.

According to CNN, the shooting took place just after 10:00 p.m. Vegas time and is now the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Reports state that Jason Aldean was performing when his set was interrupted by the sound of automatic gunfire and he ran off the stage.

There were several long bursts of gunfire, with long pauses in between while the shooter was reloading. The shots came from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay and the SWAT team had to use explosives to get into the hotel room and take him out. The suspect was allegedly killed by that SWAT team and has been identified as 64-year-old local resident, Stephen Paddock.

After reading about this awful shooting, I found out that a friend of mine on Facebook was actually in Vegas and at the concert but did leave before Jason Aldean took the stage.

As I talked about on the show, she was not ready to talk on the phone but did talk to me through Facebook messager to let us know how she was doing.