Posted September 26, 2018 10:15:46A retired veteran who fought for the U.S. Army, as well as the Army National Guard, was among the hundreds of veterans and military family members who showed up at a memorial service in downtown Las Vegas to honor the victims of the Las Vegas shooting on Sunday.
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Randy Stokes, an Army National Guardsman, served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said he had never met the gunman, and did not understand how he could have committed such a heinous crime.
“It’s really sad, I really do,” Stokes said.
“I mean, I feel for the families, and I feel terrible for the police.
We just don’t understand it.
It’s so hard to comprehend.
It just seems like it could have been somebody else.””
I think it’s an anomaly, that the people who are killing each other with guns are doing so with a degree of efficiency and precision that you don’t normally see,” Stoke said.”
They’re very much out for themselves and that’s why it’s really tough for me to understand how someone can be so proficient in so many different ways,” Stakes said.
Reno, Nevada, resident and retired Army National Security Agency (NSA) veteran Rick Stokes and his wife are among the thousands of people who attended a vigil Sunday to honor victims of Sunday’s mass shooting at a music festival in Las Veres, Las Vegas.
Stokes, who is the author of the book, “Tribute to the Dead: Veterans and Military Family in the United States,” said he believes the shooter was “a psychopath,” and that he was “just plain out of control.”
“We don’t know what was in his mind, but we know what he did.
He wanted to kill us all, he wanted to take us all out,” Stowers said.
Stoups said he was able to share the story of how he served in the Army after he retired in 2008.
“My wife and I have lived here for more than 20 years.
I’ve served in Vietnam and I’ve been in Iraq.
I had a chance to go into the Navy.
I have a lot of memories of serving my country and of what I saw and what I did, and that is something that I’m going to carry with me,” he said.
At the vigil, which was attended by several thousand people, Stokes described his experiences serving in Iraq as a veteran and as a soldier.
“I’m an Army veteran and I served my country, and then I served myself.
I served everybody, and when I got back, I realized that we’re all one family.
We’re all connected to one another,” he explained.
Stowers said he hopes the vigil will help bring people together.
“This has nothing to do with Donald Trump or anything like that.
This has nothing whatsoever to do about the NRA or anything,” he told ABC News on Sunday, noting that the event was not organized by the NRA.”
The fact that they’re all out there to honor this, that’s so wrong, and they’re going to use this to go after anybody that they want, I just can’t understand that,” he added.
Stores has a daughter and a son who are also active duty military, and he said he plans to speak at the vigil to share his story.
“As a veteran, I have this right to speak.
I don’t want to give them the benefit of the doubt.
But they can’t go out there and kill people,” he continued.
“So, I’m speaking out on behalf of these people, because I think it really helps.”
A vigil to honor those killed and wounded at a country music festivalIn addition to the mass shooting, there were also vigils and memorial services held Sunday night to honor and honor the fallen.
The Las Vegas Strip is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country, with a tourism industry estimated at $100 billion.
The National Park Service said it is hosting a memorial at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Mandalay, Nevada.
The memorial will include a statue of fallen soldiers, and the memorial will be in honor of victims of mass shootings in Las Palmas, San Bernardino, Fort Hood and other cities.
The FBI said in a statement that the mass shooter’s rampage at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Mandalay County, where many concertgoers were at the time, was an “unprecedented and senseless attack” on law enforcement and “one of the worst mass shootings ever to take place in our country.”
The shooter was killed by police, who also killed another suspect in a standoff with law enforcement.
