Santa Clara woman on same hotel floor as Las Vegas shooter recalls horror: ‘I turned out the lights’

A body is covered with a sheet after a mass shooting in which dozens were killed at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP) A body is covered with a sheet after a mass shooting in which dozens were killed at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP) Photo: Steve Marcus, Associated Press Photo: Steve Marcus, Associated Press Image 1 of / 62 Caption Close Santa Clara woman on same hotel floor as Las Vegas shooter recalls horror: ‘I turned out the lights’ 1 / 62 Back to Gallery

For 90 minutes, Meredith Rich huddled in the bathroom of her Las Vegas hotel room, the lights off, her door locked, just down the hall from where the gunman in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history fired his shots Sunday night.

Rich, an event planner from Santa Clara who was in Las Vegas for a job, was in her room on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino just after 10 p.m., about to have a late dinner, when she heard loud noises, something like fireworks.

She knew a country music concert was going on across the street and assumed the pops were part of the show. Then she got a message from colleagues on a group text saying there was an active shooter and that everyone should double-lock their door and get down.

“I quickly ran and locked the door, turned out the lights and went into the bathroom,” Rich said.

Her colleague, Isabella Gomide of San Francisco, was in her own room, on the third floor in a different tower of the same hotel, watching television. From there, she heard the first blasts, a noise she couldn’t imagine came from a gun: “Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!”

“I thought it was a jackhammer,” she said. “I called the front desk, asking why there was construction.”

Like Rich, she got a text saying there was a gunman in the building. She watched television news as the massacre unfolded just across the Las Vegas Strip.

On the 32nd floor, Rich, 34, remained in her room for what she thought was about 90 minutes before she was alerted via her phone that the gunman was on her floor. At one point, a siren went off and an alarm, followed by a ruckus in the hall, an explosion and smoke — presumably from SWAT teams entering the room of the gunman.

Eventually, the police went room to room, banging on doors, calling on occupants to identify themselves.

“They opened the door,” said Rich. “I immediately dropped to the floor like they told me.”

Police patted her down for weapons and then evacuated her, first to the basement and later to a theater, where she and other guests spent most of the night.

Guests from other areas of the hotel were allowed to remain in their rooms through the night, Gomide said.

Chris Wong of Palo Alto, who is staying on the 17th floor of the hotel for a tech conference, was one of them. He woke up at 3:30 a.m. to a thunderous rat-tat-tat of knocks on the door. Two men dressed in full gear and carrying assault rifles rushed into the room immediately after he opened the door.

They checked the closets and the bathroom, casing the space for something — or someone, Wong assumed — before leaving. He was able to stay in his room and watch the news on the hotel television.

“My first reaction was some kids were pranking people,” Wong, 41, said. “Then I heard, ‘We have a warrant. If you don’t open up, we are going to break in!’ I realized this wasn’t a joke. They were running down the hallway calling out ‘Clear!’ just like you see in a TV show. It was surreal watching them operate and realizing it wasn’t a drill.”

Guests received no information from the hotel, no phone calls or intercom announcements and the front desk phone went unanswered, he said.

Eventually, police doing a room-to-room search allowed guests to return. They told Gomide to remain in her room under lockdown. Some colleagues had been in a restaurant and fled the building, spending several hours hiding in bushes. The lockdown remained in effect until 7:30 a.m.

“You never feel like it’s going to happen to you where you are,” Gomide said. “You feel helpless and hopeless, just trying to understand why somebody would do that.”

By 8:30 a.m. Monday, Rich was allowed to return to her room.

“I’m fine, I’m really fine, I’m just tired,” Rich said. “I’m the lucky one here. I’m distraught for the people that were much worse off.”

Jill Tucker and Lizzie Johnson are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com, ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker @LizzieJohnsonn