LAS VEGAS _ As the shots rang out and bodies began to drop around her, Carmen Alegria, a 41-year-old social worker from Shafter, was certain her time was up.
"We're going to die here," she thought to herself. "We're going to die."
Just minutes earlier, she and best friend Angelica Soto, of Lost Hills, had made their way closer to the stage to be closer to one of Soto's favorite country singers, Jason Aldean.
Then what sounded like firecrackers went off. Soto fell to the ground in pain, shot in her left shoulder. Alegria took off the Route 91 Harvest festival shirt she'd bought the day before and pressed it to Soto's wound.
Seconds later, Alegria was shot in her left knee. She was bleeding badly. The spray of bullets continued. She was terrified.
"The bullets kept flying. They didn't stop," Alegria said. "I thought for sure I'd get shot again. It was continuous. I felt like it never stopped."
But the women _ who call themselves sisters _ pulled each other up, held hands and ran east, taking cover behind vendor carts until they made it to a dirt lot where they hunkered behind vehicles with other concertgoers.
"Are you guys OK? "a female concertgoer said. "I'm a nurse."
The nurse checked Soto and told her it was just a flesh wound. She'd be OK. Alegria's knee _ gushing blood _ was much worse, the nurse said. A man nearby took off his shirt, creating a makeshift tourniquet on her knee.
The shots continued.
"We have to get out of here," Soto told Alegria.
By this time, the pain had set in on Alegria's knee. She'd later discover that the gunshot had broken her tibia and fractured her femur. She'd later require surgery but is expected to fully recover.
"I don't think I can run," Alegria responded.
Soto grabbed her hand.
"Come on, girl. I'll drag you if I have to," Soto told her.
Alegria hobbled as fast as she could to a nearby street.
About the same time, a man who looked to be in his early 20s pulled up in a gray pick-up truck.
"Who's hurt? Who's hurt?" the man yelled out.
"We've been shot," Alegria and Soto responded.
Two men lifted them onto the bed of the truck.
"Oh my God. We're safe," Alegria thought to herself.
Then more gunshots rang out.
The women scooted themselves closer to the truck's main cab and hid their heads under an attached toolbox.
Soto recited the Rosary in Spanish. Alegria did the same in English. The women held on to each other.
They thought they were on their way straight to the hospital. Not so. The truck's driver stopped several more times, picking up people along the way. Men grabbed the injured _ many of them women _ lifting them into the bed of the truck with its tailgate down.
"Bodies were literally being tossed on top of us," Alegria said. Each crushed her leg, delivering a piercing pain.
She counted eight people in the truck bed. Many were shot in the arm. A woman with a gunshot injury to her right eye lay limp on a man. There was a lot of blood. The spray of bullets continued. The truck sped toward Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center _ and the sound of gunfire finally began to fade.
