Change Your Brain Every Day - How a Couple Used their Brains to Escape an Active Shooter at Route 91, with Troy & Shannon Zeeman

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Police Officer Troy Zeeman was not on duty when he and his wife Shannon began dodging bullets during the Las Vegas Route 91 shooting, but that didn’t keep him from using both his training and his instincts to guide his wife, along with many others, to safety. In this episode, the Zeemans conclude their tale of escape from the shooting, giving practical tips on how they were able to keep cool heads amidst the chaos.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back.

You know, I can't really say we're having so much fun. No, but it's really interesting and really important. And so interesting. And Shannon, you had an interesting comment because Troy's coming out at this from his training. I mean, really, literally decades of training. But you're not. Correct. Yes.

So when Troy's sitting here talking about he was assessing, he knew that the shooter was not in the venue. He didn't know where, but he knew he wasn't in the venue. And he's talking about how he knew that we had time and, you know, we could stay where we were while he was figuring out. He was, as far as I know, he was the only one in our group that knew the person was not in the venue. We were in there for 10 minutes. It's a long time. And I thought the person was in there. When Troy got shot in the leg, the shooter had changed his trajectory. And so it was actually starting to hit the container we were hiding behind. So I actually visually.

At first it wasn't. It was going a different direction. So you were safe for a little while. And then all of a sudden he changed direction. Yeah. We would get some errant rounds and we got some shrapnel um that hit us um i i got hit on almost every barrage but it was just um shrapnel or pieces from the ground or um you know there'd be an errant round that maybe hit the building once that we are behind the corrugated metal uh but very very rare did the actual rounds

come directly at us and then once i got, that first barrage was right on us. And then subsequent barrages after that were, I mean, you could see the impact rounds hitting everywhere around us. So it was just raining down on us at that point. And are you seeing people get shot as well? Not on those barrages, but on the other ones. The ones prior to that when I was assessing. You saw people going down? Yeah, because what they would do is a lot of people would lay down on the ground when they started hearing gunfire.

Yeah, which is not the right thing to do, right? Not with a sniper. No. But, you know, they didn't know. But we thought he was in the venue. So it is the right thing to do. So get low is what you often hear. Right.

Get down low. Right. But he was up high. Right. So what are you going to do yeah if you were to take a pencil and put it on a table and look at it through the height of your eye that would be a sniper round right that would be a sniper position if you lay the pencil down how much more area surface area do you have so those are kind of the things that

i can see but there were also people that were running from the front of the stage to the the main exit where we came out where we came came from, where we have to check in. And they were actually running through gunfire because they only knew of one area to go to. And so that's the thing that I've always been taught is never go through the main exit where everyone else is going through. If you, unless you are certain you can get out, but if there's another way to go, you need to go. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and in this case, he didn't really have the main exit covered it was just angle the angle of his rounds were coming in between the exit and where those people were standing and so they had to run through the i don't think they knew they were running through the bullets but they were running

through the bullets to get there yeah they so then walk us through what happened so we can get to what do you do well and when did you get shot i'm still wanting so that you got shot around the fifth barrage and that was when we all thought the guy was walking towards us so there was like a point where i thought i had a plan where we talk about having plans and stuff i had had a plan where I felt like Troy wouldn't leave people. He was trying to protect him. So I thought I was going to watch him get shot, how I was going to pull him out to safety. Like I was trying to do that. And then at another point was, you know, where your your fight or flight comes in.

And I was like, you got to be kidding me. If this guy comes around the corner, I just fought for my life for the last year I'm he's not taking me out like I was I was ready to I probably wouldn't have won but I was ready to take it because of the breast cancer and having survived that and it's like no yeah not this no this is not yeah we didn't my family didn't go through what we just went through to then end it here so i think that also helped me in being more of a partner to troy and helping him get people out um but yeah there was at one when he got shot he told me that we needed to tell people to move over like 12 inches and the people to my right were just ghosts they couldn't move they were frozen they were frozen or overstimulated there i was looking

there were so many and they were sitting down it was like i was yelling at them people are getting shot i needed to move and they couldn't and that's when i relayed to him i'm like they can't move and yeah they're basal ganglia is an area deep in the brain. When it gets activated, some people, like police officers and firefighters, they can go toward the fire. People like me, and I was an infantry medic, but I didn't like it at all because my first response is to freeze. And it used to make me feel bad until I realized, oh, that's just my brain. And so if you can just move your pinky,

then you can move. So it's like, you don't have to move everything at once. Just move your pinky and then you can get activated during trauma. Right. And that's amazing because that's something that we teach. I don't do it in the clinic, clinical way you do it. But I teach that because if you can make a decision, even if it's a third, a hundredth of a second, that decision will break that freeze. And you can say, oh, I can do this and then move to that and then make another decision. And that will that will keep you from getting to that point where you're frozen. So we do train that.

But one of the things that Shannon said was funny because when I got shot, she yelled at me, did you get shot? And I said, no. And he really thought that I thought he didn't get shot by saying no. Well, I don't want her to panic. I was like, if I'm asking the question,

I might know. Actually, no. Is that right? I got shot in the right thigh. In the right thigh. Yeah. So the bullet entered my thigh and broke up in there. I have like 13 pieces in my leg.

And eventually the doctor said that they should remove those one by one in the future. But after that, what happened was- And was it because- I'm sorry, I just have to know. Yeah. Was it because it came through the corrugated metal? No, I was actually standing outside the corrugated metal. Because?

It was where I needed to be so that everybody else could get their cover. He was standing right on the corner of the corrugated metal so that he could see the whole venue of what was happening. So you're trying to assess the situation. So I'm trying to assess and then um it i couldn't push anybody else out of the way all right so you get shot then what happens then um so because the angle of the round started coming differently that's when i got shot um i told everybody we need to move over a little bit people couldn't do that um some of the people

couldn't do it but there was about 20 people who um looked at me and said, OK, we can we can do stuff. It was a nonverbal communication that we had. But I could tell that these people were willing to do what I needed to do, what I needed to do to get them out. So I gave some more commands and said, we're going to move to blue the House of Blues. It's a covered bar just on the other side of the venue. So on the next barrage, uh, we're going to, we're going to move on the next reload. So another barrage came out, we saw a lot of impact rounds, a lot of things. We were taking a lot of rounds. And then, um, once that barrage stopped, I said,

go, go, go. Um, we all ran to the house of blues, got inside. Um, at the point we got inside, there was more, uh, rounds coming down range, but no no i don't think at us i don't think the the bar got hit i don't know but i i don't think it got hit um so now you're in a building now we're in a building which was much safer because so even though you've been shot you've been able to move your body yes and help these people find shelter right and then so while we were in there i gave them i told them hold on for a second let me check the back so i went out the back check that um it's a good escape route and there was an emergency exit right behind there so the gate had been opened everybody's flooding out there i went back in grabbed everybody and said okay let's get to the doorway we got to the doorway um we made

another assessment when rounds came down range and And then once those rounds stopped, then we moved out. Why didn't you stay in the bar? Because you still didn't know? Well, I knew the guy was outside the venue, but that bar is a makeshift bar. It's not real walls. So if he started targeting the bar, the rounds would still come through. So I just decided we needed to get outside the venue. It was concealment.

Got it. Shannon, what's going on in your head? Um, I really can't tell you. Were you just on autopilot? Yeah, I was. I was, um, trying to follow anything that Troy told us. Again, I didn't understand why we were going in the bar because I thought that the person was still in the venue and he had us like hide behind a bar. So a lot of my things were in my head. Why are we doing this?

Why do you have us sitting here? But I fully trusted him. So then I wasn't verbally questioning any of it um and um i felt like i knew we needed to get him out because we needed to find a medical for him um so it was um the energy in that area troy talks a lot about the carnage for him that's what resonates with him for me it was the energy of the whole experience the people being so it was the energy of the whole experience. The people being so freaked out. It was just so heightened. Your whole body, even when I, every time I talk about it, even right now, I feel that

whole vibration go through my body. And I think that was very consuming is that you were just on autopilot. Like you say, just trying to survive and get out. And so by the time we got out of there, every time we'd find a paramedic or something like that for Troy, there would be people that were so much more worse than he was. And so we'd just keep on moving. And of course, Troy being who he is,

we're not going down the main areas. We are traversing alleys and we're going over fences. And cause he is like, you don't, you can't go to the masses. Cause if there were, cause we still didn't know, right.

If it was one person, I would never go with the people. So, I mean, it was, uh, and by the time we went in, uh,

to Hooters, got into Hooters and somebody started screaming active shooter. It was a very high stress again, even though Troy was like, there's not an active shooter. You still have. It's that survival. Yeah, it's changing your nervous system. It turns on and it doesn't just turn off. It is changing your nervous system.

There's a fascinating book on why zebras don't get ulcers. And so, I mean, in a sense, you're having your zebra moment where the lion is chasing you and the lion wants you as lunch. But why zebras don't get ulcers is their nervous systems can go back quickly. But if you have a year where you've just been fighting cancer, that's not like a single episode where the lion's chasing you. It's like the fricking lion is chasing you for a year. And if you've been a police officer for 20 years, then your nervous system has been heightened

with all of the things that you've seen and experienced, because this is not the first traumatic event that you'd seen or you'd experienced, right? Right. But it did give you an advantage. Yes. Oh, clearly, a tactical advantage where, I mean, that's really the hero part where you were able to save the lives

of those people who were dependent on you. Yeah, how many of them may not have made it out. And so it's interesting. When we come back, I want to talk about, okay, well, what's the fallout for both of you personally? And then let's talk about how we met and then you guys coming to the clinic and the difference that we make.

And I want to talk about strategies just a little bit. Yes. I think that's important for people. Great. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com.

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