A Year After Route 91 Shooting, Chris Young Urges Fans to ‘Cherish Every Day You Have’
Chris Young booked a last-minute flight to attend Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas the morning the mass shooting took place. Young wasn't scheduled to play the festival, so he was backstage watching Jason Aldean's headlining set on Oct. 1, 2017, when he first heard gunshots. On the one-year anniversary of the massacre, the singer reflects on the tragedy.
"I don't open up very often so I hope everyone takes this message as I mean it," he writes on Instagram. "It has been a year since #Route91 happened...so much loss for no reason during something that should have been a happy moment for everyone present. I was there, I'm lucky to be alive, and I will never forget the loss that so many had to suffer through that day and all the days since."
He adds, "I'll never forget having to call my family saying I hope to see them again. I love you all. Cherish every day you have."
Young was backstage at the sold-out Route 91 Festival in Las Vegas just after midnight when a gunman opened fire. He says he took cover from bullets in a backstage trailer.
"Spent I don't know how long on the floor of a trailer behind the stage ... know multiple people are dead. Listening to that gunfire ..." Young says. "I'm literally shaking still."
Speaking of the incident, Young tells Taste of Country it was the scariest night of his life. He returned to the stage three nights later in Fresno, Calif. and rejoined Aldean's They Don't Know Tour on Oct. 12, 2017.
“I was actually in San Francisco that morning and made a last-minute decision that I was gonna fly down," the "Losing Sleep" singer says. "But I was the only person in my crew, band, etc. ... that was there.”
Fifty-eight lives were lost and 800 were injured following the incident. The Vegas shooting remains the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.