"I got a text from my son who’s a Los Angeles police officer. (He said) 'We have gotten out...secured the ladies and we’ll get back to the hotel...I’ll talk to you later,'" recalls Jim Diamond, a 34-year veteran of the Tampa Police Department and current Director of the West Central Florida Police Benevolent Association.
At 1:58 a.m., Monday morning, Jim discovered his son was right in the middle of the Las Vegas massacre.
"When I turned the news on then I knew exactly what he was talking about. He had just gone from Los Angeles with his lady and some other officers on Friday to celebrate her birthday," Diamond says. "He and the other officers recognized the gunfire for what it was very quickly and then began evacuating people outside funneling them outside the venue."
Jim himself is no stranger to gun fire as a 34-year veteran of the Tampa Police Department.
"Supersonic rounds traveling at 20 -25 thousand feet per second they actually break the sound barrier and you hear them slap. It’s like taking two pieces of two by fours. It’s a flat crack. That’s what they heard," he says.
His son is a 29-year combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and now with the LAPD. A good guy in a crowd of victims.
"Whenever you go into a crowd you see two guys with there heads up the good guys and the bad guys. We take an oath to do the job, and it doesn't matter what venue or what time of day it is. We are what we are," Jim says.
Jim says his son believes that unfortunately many of the injuries that have been attributed to the shooter, were more likely caused by the stampede from people injuring themselves trying to get out.
