A car dealership in Arizona plans on giving a free truck to the Marine veteran who commandeered a pickup truck during the Las Vegas massacre to help transport between 20 to 30 shooting victims to the hospital, the Arizona Republic first reported.
Shane Beus, the owner of B5 Motors, said he was so touched by Marine veteran Taylor Winston’s story that he reached out to him so he could give him a free truck.
Winston is expected to visit the car dealership on Monday to pick up the silver Ford F-150, Beus said.
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Winston plans on selling his current vehicle and donating the money to the victims of the Las Vegas massacre.
“It’s very, very courageous what he did,” Beus told the Arizona Republic. “He was willing to risk his life and run back into the storm and help out.”
During the Las Vegas massacre on Oct. 1, Taylor Winston, 29, a Marine veteran from San Diego, stole one of the nearest pickup trucks he could find and transported between 20 and 30 shooting victims to Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center before ambulances could reach the concert grounds.
“This is what a hero looks like: Iraq veteran Taylor Winston commandeered a truck to get victims to the hospital,” Daily Beast editor, Scott Bixby wrote on Twitter.
(Twitter)
Winston was with his girlfriend and friends at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas when the shooter, Stephen Paddock, fired into the crowd of more than 22,000 people, killing 58 people and injuring nearly 500 others.
When country singer Jason Aldean stopped playing music and people started running, Winston realized that something was wrong.
“The shots got louder and louder, closer to us and [I] saw people getting hit, it was like we could be hit at any second. Once we got to the fence, I helped throw a bunch of people over, and got myself over,” Winston told CBS News. “It was a mini war zone, but we couldn’t fight back.”
Winston, a Marine veteran who joined the service when he was 17 and served two tours in Iraq , said even though he was unable to fight, he wanted to do what he could to help.
“I saw a field with a bunch of white trucks. I tested my luck to see if any of them had keys in it, first one we tried opening had keys sitting right there,” Winston said. “I started looking for people to take to the hospital. There was just too many and it was overwhelming how much blood was everywhere.”
Despite putting himself at risk, Winston made two separate trips carrying shooting victims to the hospital.
“I think a lot of my training in the military helped me in the situation,” Winston said. “We needed to get them out of there regardless of our safety.”
