San Jose high school graduate among the dead following Vegas mass shooting
Michelle Vo, a 2003 graduate of San Jose's Independence High School, was one of the 59 victims who died in the Las Vegas mass shooting.
The 32-year-old had attended UC Davis and was living in Los Angeles at the time she went to the Route 91 Harvest Festival outside the Mandalay Bay Casino and Hotel Sunday night when gunman Stephen Paddock fired off from his arsenal of firearms into the crowd.
She recently moved to Los Angeles where she worked as an insurance agent at New York Life Insurance Company.
Vo’s family returned to San Jose from Las Vegas Tuesday, after meeting with the coroner's office. They said, they're not angry but want to focus on the good that's come out of all this evil.
Michelle Vo’s older sister, Cathy, said her younger sister was fearless and loved to travel. Her mother, Hana Bui, described Michelle Vo as a good girl who was always smiling. Cathy Vo said Michelle recently fell in love with country music and that’s why she was at the three day music festival in Las Vegas.
“She was happy,” said Cathy Vo. “She was enjoying it telling us how much fun she was having.”
According to the Columbus Dispatch, Kody Robertson had caught eyes with Vo at the concert and was hanging out with her when the gunfire range out. Vo fell. He told the Dispatch that he fell on her as she lay injured.
“We’d run and duck and run and duck and run and duck,” Robertson said. “Your instinct is to run, to get away from that, but there were so many people, too many people down all over who needed help.”
Robertson and others carried Vo from the chaos, performing CPR to try to save a the California woman with a peppy smile and a penchant for the Warriors.
“You can’t even process it,” he told the Dispatch. “Husbands and wives on top of one another just screaming, people crying and trying too hard to get someone to wake up.”
A man in a pickup stopped and Robertson and the others put Vo in the truck bed with others. The driver sped away toward a hospital.
That was the last Robertson saw of her.
“We are hoping she didn't feel that fear or the terror,” said Cathy Vo. “It was a quick death, peaceful death. No anger just a lot of sadness. It was a senseless act that I could ask why for the rest of my life why. I would never get that answer.”
Michelle Vo’s family is overwhelmed with unimaginable grief yet grateful for Michelle’s friends and strangers like Kody Robertson who they call an angel. They are focusing on the good as Michelle Vo would have wanted.
“There’s so much love out there,” said Cathy Vo. “Michelle had so much love and there's so much love coming into the family right now.”
KTVU reporter Azenith Smith contributed to this report