Las Cruces park mass shooting survivors share story

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — For many of us, what started as a heavy day has become a heavy week in the wake of the mass shooting at Young Park in Las Cruces. 

It’s a feeling that many say will likely last for a while as the community heals and mourns the loss of three young lives. For the families of the 15 victims who survived, they’re holding each other a bit tighter and counting themselves lucky.

What started as a night of hanging out, looking at cars, quickly turned to chaos.

“We just saw everyone running around, but we didn’t know why. So, we started running,” Nataly Nieto said. “At first, when we heard the shots, we thought it was the cars.”

Nataly was with her siblings at Young Park when bullets began to fly Friday night.

“As soon as I tried to look back for my little brother, that’s when I just fell down, because I didn’t even feel the bullet I just fell down, and I didn’t know what [happened], and until I saw another girl fall in front of me,” Nataly said.

Then, her oldest brother tried to get to her.

“He was trying to come back, to come get me. And then he got ran over,” Nataly said.

Luckily, her brother was okay.

“He came and picked me up. And then that’s when I found out that I had gotten a shot because he tried to pull me up, but I couldn’t get up,” Nataly recalled.

The bullet hit her back, missing all of her vital organs.

“They just told me that I was lucky that the bullet just went around my stomach. It didn’t go like straight through, it just went around,” she said.

Her siblings rushed her to the car and drove her to the hospital.

“I couldn’t breathe. And then while I was in the car, that’s when I started feeling it,” Nataly said.

In the chaos, some of the siblings got separated. Nataly’s mother, Yuriana Ortiz, was in a frenzy, not knowing where to go.

“It was too much. It was too much to try to process at once,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz says it was hours before she could finally see her daughter. The waiting was excruciating.

“Up until six in the morning, and that was because a social worker was, she was like, you really need… she really needs you [she] needs you inside,” Ortiz said.

Since news of the shooting came to light, some have criticized the 200 attendees of what the Las Cruces Police Department described as “an unsanctioned car show.”

“Seeing these people commenting stupid things that doesn’t make sense because, I mean, my kids, I see them there, they were not intoxicated,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz said her kids are traumatized

As for Nataly, she recognizes the reality likely hasn’t hit her yet.

“Sometimes I forget I got shot, so I try to do things by myself, and then I just feel the pain. I’m like, oh, never mind,” Nataly said.

As she continues to heal, her survival just brings one word to mind for both her and her mother.

“Blessed,” Nataly and Ortiz said.

Nataly still has the bullet inside of her. Doctors told her it was safer to keep it in. She has to stay bed-ridden for the next two weeks and then follow up with her doctor. As she heals, she says she knows she can lean on her family and they can lean on her as they try to heal mentally and physically.