Polson man survives, reflects on Vegas shooting
Nicole Tavenner
Cody Doyle
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POLSON — A Polson native and 2008 Polson High School grad made it out alive from the shootings that claimed the lives of 59 in Las Vegas on Oct. 1.
Cody Doyle, 28, who has been a Polson Police officer for 13 months, had gone to the three-day event with two friends he met in college at Montana Tech in Butte.
Jordan Thompson, a Columbia Falls native, and Amanda Dunn, a Great Falls native, traveled to Las Vegas for a pre-marriage party and invited Doyle. The couple, who were married this past weekend with Doyle serving as “best man,” traveled to Vegas for Route 91 Harvest Festival from their current residence of Bakersfield, California, Doyle said.
Their group of about 20 was located “left stage” and that may have saved their lives. Doyle said that some of the stage was located between them and the gunman, who was on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
Doyle described a “really bizarre sound” that began while Jason Aldean and his band played shortly after 10 p.m.
Initially Doyle thought it was fireworks or an audio malfunction. He knew something was wrong when he saw the camera drop on two projection screens located to the left and right of the stage. Then the screens faded to black, Aldean and his band ran off stage and flood lights lit up the crowd.
Then Doyle heard a steady popping sound and knew immediately it was gunfire.
A lot of people got down on the ground at that point. He and three of his friends did too.
“I could tell it was coming from a ways away,” he said.
When the gunfire stopped momentarily, Doyle and his group of four got up and went in the direction opposite the gunfire. They passed through a patio outside a bar, went through the bar and toward an exit.
“As we reached an exit, we started seeing people on the ground bleeding,” he said, so they turned to another exit, which was about 150 yards from their original location.
People were running in every direction, he said, explaining they would head in another direction after seeing someone who had been shot.
“It was mass confusion and tough to describe,” he said. “There were some who were panicking. I was telling them not to push.”
He saw some he knew were going to die because of where they had been shot and others who he called “walking wounded.”
Once outside the fenced area, Doyle and his group began running and did so for about 10 minutes. They headed away from The Strip on back roads and ran through apartment complexes until they stopped at a Motel 6.
A couple who were standing outside their room provided refuge for Doyle’s small group. They sat on two beds until 2 or 3 a.m. watching the news on TV.
His group, which had been staying at the Excalibur, couldn’t return there because The Strip and its hotels had been shut down. They found out that a refuge area had been set up at the Thomas & Mack Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, so they decided to go there. They walked for about 45 minutes before hailing a cab.
Once there they found water bottles and blankets and catnapped in some box seats until about 7 a.m., when they boarded a bus back toward The Strip, which was still closed. Then they walked about 30 minutes to the Excalibur. Doyle said he showered, packed and hailed a cab to the airport. His flight to Missoula was to leave at noon.
‘Almost like a dream’
“Even now it seems almost like a dream,” he said last week. “I’m thinking, ‘Did this really happen?’”
He had tried to call his fiancée in Montana when he was running down the back streets of Vegas. He was unsuccessful at first but then was able to reach his dad for a 20- to 30-second phone call.
Once they made it to Motel 6, where they stopped due to their woman friend’s mild asthma attack, Doyle was finally able to talk to his fiancée, who was staying with Doyle’s parents, Jay and Diana, at their home in Thompson Falls.
In the weeks that followed the event, in which nearly 500 were injured, Doyle said he chose to focus on the good that happened.
“It amazed me how so many people can come together in the face of adversity,” he said.
All 20 in his larger group survived, said Doyle, who worked in the Elko, Nevada area for three years as a forester and wildland firefighter with the Nevada Division of Forestry before coming back to Polson for a job with Polson Police Department.
Bump stocks?
In the aftermath of the shooting with talk of regulating or passing a law to ban bump stocks — the devices that the shooter, Stephen Paddock, attached to semi-automatic rifles — Doyle has his own opinion.
“The whole bump stock issue is silly to me. You can fire a semi-automatic rifle just as fast without a bump stock,” he said, although adding, “It’s easier with a bump stock.”
Doyle said his views about guns have “definitely not” changed as a result of the shootings.
“I don’t think any stricter gun regulation is going to change any of that. It’s not going to change people,” he said.
“As far as I know, everything he bought was legal and he passed all the background checks for the stuff he purchased,” Doyle said.
“No one knows why he did it,” he said of Paddock, who has been described as an introvert and a “high roller” who got his two-room suite at the Mandalay Bay “comped” by the hotel. “I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
