By EMS1 Staff
LAS VEGAS — A firefighter was credited with saving his girlfriend who was shot in the heart during the Las Vegas massacre.
NY Post reported that Christina Kitcat, 29, and her boyfriend, Kelly Culbertson, were at the Route 91 Harvest country musical festival Sunday night when they heard what they thought were fireworks.
“I’m like, why would somebody bring fireworks? Why did everybody disperse?” Culbertson said. “Then another round of fireworks goes off, and she looks at me and says, ‘It’s hard for me to breathe.’”
Culbertson, a firefighter-EMT, recalls his training kicking in.
“We have a saying: we prepare for the worst but hope for the best,” he said.
As Culbertson tried to assess Kitcat’s injuries, two other firefighters, Bruce and Tricia Pollett, helped carry her to safety behind a tent. Culbertson said she was drifting in and out of consciousness, according to the report.
“She’d come back, look at me. I’d say, ‘Babe, are you with me?’ She’d smile. She kept saying, ‘I’m going to go to sleep.’ I’m like, ‘No, you’re not.’”
Doctors, who said it’s a miracle Kitcat is alive, said the bullet tore through her arm and into her heart and lung; shrapnel left four holes in her heart and holes in her lungs.
Kitcat underwent open heart surgery Monday and is recovering.