Sonny Melton, a 29-year-old nurse, was among the 22,000-strong crowd at the Route 91 Harvest festival with his wife, Heather Melton.

His grieving widow has described how she would have died were it not for his quick actions when bullets started flying through the air.

“He saved my life. He grabbed me and started running when I felt him get shot in the back," she told a radio station in Tennessee. "I want everyone to know what a kind-hearted, loving man he was, but at this point, I can barely breathe."

In a Facebook post she said she had lost her “true love and knight in shining armour”.

"At this point, I'm in complete disbelief and despair,” she wrote. “I don't know what to say. Sonny was the most kind-hearted, loving man I have ever met. He saved my life and lost his.”