Hundreds of people queue to donate blood following the mass shooting at the Route 91 music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 2, 2017.  REUTERS/Mike Blake
Hundreds of people queue to donate blood following the mass shooting in Las Vegas. REUTERS/Mike Blake

Las Vegas hero treated the wounded despite being shot four times



A prison officer shot four times by the Las Vegas gunman carried on giving first aid to other victims, his family told The National.

Prison officer Todd Wienke, 48, acted as a human shield for his wife and then helped save others while still under fire, according to his daughter Amanda, 21.

"He jumped on top of my stepmum and was shot in the back and in the side," said Amanda. "After the second round finished he decided to get up and start running. He was then shot in the arm and in his left side. He said it looked like a war zone.

She said the father-of-two "immediately started triage on a few girls who had been hit. He also tried grabbing people's hands to pull them to the gate.

"He was taken the the hospital in an ambulance. There were two other people in the ambulance, both had gun shot wounds to the head," she said.

"He is currently stable but will need to have surgery to continue the process of removing the bullets and scrap metal.”

Amanda said her step-mother Oshia Collins-Waters, a healthcare worker had a "busted knee and a black eye from being trampled” but was otherwise unscathed.

“He was starting to tear up over the phone," said Amanda. "But he cracked a joke about having a new story to tell at parties. I think humour is his way to get through this emotional time.”

Small Things Like These

Director: Tim Mielants
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson, Eileen Walsh
Rating: 4/5

The Africa Institute 101

Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction. 

Veil (Object Lessons)
Rafia Zakaria
​​​​​​​Bloomsbury Academic


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