One year ago the United States suffered one of the most violent massacres in our country’s history, a brutal mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip.
Today we’d like to remember a story of selfless heroics that saved the lives of more than two dozen people. Some of you may remember 29-year-old Taylor Winston, a Marine veteran who comandeered a truck and used it to transport victims to the hospital.
“Jenn and I luckily found a truck with keys in it and started transporting priority victims to the hospital and made a couple trips and tried to help out the best we could until more ambulances could arrive,” Winston told the Daily Beast.
Taylor piled 30 people into the pickup’s backseat and bed over two trips. “I can’t be for certain,” he said about the survival chances of some victims. “There’s a few that I don’t think probably made it. They were pretty limp when we were pulling them out of the truck, but they still had a pulse, so I’m hoping for the best.” He also helped a nurse set up a triage station outside the concert to identify which victims required urgent care.
After hours of saving lives, Taylor left the heavily bloodstained truck in the hospital parking lot. In a state of exhaustion, he walked off with the keys in his pocket.
Over the next few days Taylor’s story went viral as it was shared around the globe. It wasn’t long before the truck’s owner reached out to the veteran Marine who did so much for so many.
The truck belonged to Phelps Amelsberg, a Las Vegas man who was attending the music festival and accidentally left his keys in the ignition. Authorities helped him locate his truck, but the keys were still in Taylor’s possession.
Phelps posted the following message on Facebook looking for his keys,
Three days after the Las Vegas shooting, Taylor Winston’s name was popping up everywhere from Facebook and Instagram to televised news and radio broadcasts. It wasn’t long before Phelps was able to track down Taylor’s contact information and sent him the following message,
Taylor posted the owner’s message on Facebook. Dozens of people replied saying they would have let Taylor take their trucks too.
One week later a local dealership gifted Taylor a new truck for his act of heroism. Taylor sold his then current vehicle and donated the proceeds to a fund benefiting the hundreds of Las Vegas shooting victims and their families.
Taylor joined the Marines when he was 17-years-old and served two tours in Iraq.
Would you have let Taylor take your truck?