Sunday's deadly shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs hit close to home for one Frisco man.
"Last night, I just woke up in a panic and just started walking around the house checking the doors and the windows," said Todd Blyleven, who survived the Oct. 1 Las Vegas mass shooting and helped many people there to safety.
"It sets you right back into that mode where you're getting shot at — you realize what that means and what that's like — you're hearing people scream and you're there," Blyleven said.
"I was there in that church, emotionally, with those people."
Blyleven and his wife, Cathie, were near center stage at the outdoor music festival in Las Vegas when that shooting started.
"The pops just kept repeating, and people were falling and going down," Blyleven told NBC 5 after returning to North Texas the next day.
The Blylevens and six friends ran for cover, diving behind some police cars.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
"We could hear the bullets whizzing and ricocheting off the metal buildings," Blyleven said.
But then he and others ran back to help the injured, pulling more than two dozen people to safety and directed even more away from the danger.
"My heart and soul and prayers just went out immediately to those lost victims' families and those that were there to experience that horrible atrocity," Blyleven said Monday, following the mass shooting at the Sutherland Springs church.
He's heard the same thing from other Las Vegas survivors.
"We've all been sending prayers down to those in Texas, and really those anywhere that are going through this same emotional and scary feeling," he said.
When Blyleven's 11-year-old daughter asked about the shooting in South Texas, he told her there are more good people than bad.
"I said, 'Baby girl, yeah, a lot of people got hurt.' I said, 'But one thing I want you to know is that there is good in this world, and I experienced that on that evening in Vegas when there was so many people that went in to help and pull people out, and I know that there was good in that church after that horrible act had been done that people were there to help,'" Blyleven said he told his daughter.
"Just continue to believe in the good in mankind," Blyleven said.
