LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – A student who was caught in the commotion of the shooting at UNLV says it was a stranger who helped her get out safely. Now, she wants to find that classmate and show her gratitude.
Natalie Matarazzo is a junior at UNLV and a wheelchair user. She was outside Beam Hall when the shooting started on December 6.
“We start hearing sirens, and there’s a police car that just pulls right up to the building, and people started running almost immediately after that,” recalled Matarazzo. “We started hearing a bit more commotion, gunshots, just people running, started to yell. And I didn’t really know where to go. I figured the best direction would be to follow the crowd.”
“I was really scared that I was going to be left behind or I was going to be trampled or people were not going to notice me or pay attention to me,” Matarazzo said in a TikTok video.
“This girl comes up and she says, ‘Do you want me to push you?’ I was just so scared. I didn’t know what was going on. I figured the best option would be to get out of there as fast as possible, so I said, ‘Yes, please,’” said Matarazzo.
Matarazzo said that girl helped push her wheelchair about a mile, all the way to her apartment off campus.
“She told me I think that there’s a shooter, I think we need to keep moving,” recalled Matarazzo. “She said, ‘Don’t worry about pushing. Just call your mom. Don’t worry, I got you.’”
Matarazzo didn’t get her name, but now, she’s hoping to find that classmate who helped her that day.
“I just transferred here, so I don’t know a heck of a lot of people on campus. I have people that I’m friendly with, but no one in the moment that I could really cling onto, so having that one person there, knowing that she also cared about my well-being. That meant a lot to me,” said Matarazzo.
“I just want to say thank you and I just want to make sure that I know her name,” she added. “I really don’t know if I would’ve made it off campus in its entirety if it wasn’t for her.”
Natalie has been posting on social media in hopes of tracking down the person who helped her to say thank you.
“It says a lot about her that she was just so willing to help out in a time when we were just absolutely panicked, and you could really only look out for yourself,” said Matarazzo. “I’m grateful that she was there because we made it out safely.”
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