COLUMBUS (WCMH) – Tuesday afternoon, a plane full of people landed in Columbus from Las Vegas. Everybody had a story, including a father whose son narrowly escaped the concert carnage and a man who witnessed the chaos on the strip.

Danny Massie got a text message from his son Ron before the Route 91 Harvest Festival concert in Vegas. He never could have predicted the phone call he’d get just a few hours later.

“He said we’re stepping over bodies getting away,” said Danny. “He said ‘Dad, I’m witnessing something that is so horrible I can’t even describe it.’”

Ron told his dad, “I’ll call you later, Pop,” and the line went dead.

“I was scared to death because I got a 10-second blurb and I never heard from him again for hours and hours and hours,” said Danny.

Ron, a Los Angeles paramedic on vacation in Vegas, hid in a metal sound trailer with his girlfriend before running to safety.

“I thought I was going to start crying,” Danny said upon hearing the news his son was safe.

A mile and a half down the strip, Vegas resident R.T. could hear the shots inside the Cosmopolitan Hotel.

“It’s like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and then just people screaming, people running, every which direction you want to think, they’re running,” he said.

R.T. said people panicked.

“When you see the police department run into a casino with a machine gun, saying get away from the windows and you see folks running through the Bellagio and the Cosmopolitan and the Aria, you know this is real,” said R.T.

The hotel was kept on lockdown for nearly three hours before R.T. was able to leave.

Back in Columbus, an anxious little boy waited with his grandpa to be reunited with his terrified parents, back from their first trip to Vegas.

“I felt bad. It’s unfortunate. Situations happen, but we get to come home,” Hallsville resident Kelly Wahl said choking back tears.

NBC4 spoke with some central Ohioans leaving for Vegas this afternoon who said they planned to donate blood when they arrived.