Couple That Escaped Las Vegas Massacre Dies in Car Crash

Tragedy strikes just two weeks after a miraculous escape
By Josh Rosenblatt,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 30, 2017 4:25 PM CDT

A married couple who survived the Oct. 1 shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 people died just weeks later in a car crash not far from their home in Murietta, Calif. Dennis Carver and his wife, Lorraine, were at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas when Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay and Resort Casino, the Los Angeles Times reports. Dennis Carver jumped on top of his wife to protect her from the gunfire, and during a lull they got up and ran to safety, escaping unharmed. Just over two weeks later, though, the couple was driving less than a mile from their home at about 11pm on Oct. 16 when they went off the roadway and crashed. They were pronounced dead at the scene.

Officer William Strom of the California Highway Patrol says the Carvers' car struck a cinder-block column, ripping off the rear axle and rupturing the gas tank. The car then struck a second column, rolled over, and burst into flames, ABC News reports. It took firefighters almost an hour to put out the fire. A week after the crash, Dennis Carver's cell phone, which he'd lost during the chaos in Las Vegas, was shipped back to the family by a Las Vegas FBI agent. “When we turned it on, all his photos and messages were still there,” the couple's daughter Brooke says. “This is how we know they’re looking down and watching over us.” (More Las Vegas shooting stories.)

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