From: Alaska Dispatch News (Anchorage’s largest newspaper)

2 Alaskans killed, 1 wounded in mass shooting at Las Vegas music fest

Updated: October 3 calendar Published October 2

… Adrian Murfitt, a 35-year-old Anchorage commercial fisherman, was killed when a bullet hit his neck, said a friend, Brian MacKinnon, who held Murfitt as he died.

Dorene Anderson, a recent treasurer of an Anchorage hockey booster club called the “Cowbell Crew,” who described herself on social media as a stay-at-home mother, also died in the shootings, according to Facebook posts from friends and a daughter.

And Rob McIntosh, a 52-year-old real estate agent from North Pole, was shot several times in the chest and arm….

Barickman threw himself on top of her, and “we could feel shots and wind just blowing past us, just hitting next to us,” McCann said. “And then all of a sudden the firing stopped and everyone around us was like, ‘Get up! You have to run.’ “

“Thought it was firecrackers, and the second round of gunshots — you heard the gunfire, and then you hear the bullets hit the ground, and metal and people and stuff,” MacKinnon said in a phone interview Monday morning from Las Vegas.

Murfitt and MacKinnon, who described the two as best friends, were taking a picture together when a bullet “went through his neck,” MacKinnon said. Another bullet that seemed to ricochet up from the ground hit the brim of MacKinnon’s own hat, he added. …

McIntosh, the North Pole real estate agent, took at least three bullets to the chest and one in his arm, though at least one shot was blocked by a rib, his family said. …

Cronk said he stabilized his friend by putting compression on his wounds; McIntosh actually put his own finger in one bullet hole. The group then tried to get to a hospital in the bed of a pickup truck.

Cronk said he helped one injured man into the truck, only to have him die in his arms. …

“It was horrible — especially because we thought that a shooter had come in behind us and was in the building,” said McCann. A few more people ultimately joined the group in the basement and said they’d heard there were shooters inside the casinos.

The group formed a little prayer circle and the men equipped themselves with makeshift weapons….

The group stayed in the basement, which turned out to be at a resort near the concert, the Tropicana, for more than an hour before they learned it was safe to move. But then they couldn’t leave the Tropicana, which was locked down, for another five hours….

Adrian Murfitt played hockey at Dimond High School, his mother said. He’d just finished a summer of commercial fishing in Chignik, on the Alaska Peninsula, on a boat called the Mary Jane, she added.

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