One month ago, Nyngan’s Marley-Jo Collier qualified for the ICN (I Compete Natural) Australian titles in Melbourne.
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But the titles clashed with a planned trip to the United States to attend the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas.
After much um-ing and ah-ing, Marley-Jo and husband Chris Wilson decided to cancel the trip – a decision that could have saved their lives.
“I saw it first on Facebook … I rang the wife and said ‘wow. We would have been there’,” Chris said.
“We’re still in shock, even now … that we could have been in the middle of it.
“Even watching the videos on Facebook and hearing the gun shooting, thinking we would have been in the middle of that being shot at.”
At least 59 people were killed when a gunman opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest Festival from an overlooking hotel.
... we would have been in the middle of that being shot at.
- Chris Wilson
At least 527 people have been injured in what has now been confirmed as the deadliest shooting in modern US history.
The death toll is expected to rise. It is not yet known if any Australians were killed or injured in the attack.
Marley-Jo said it was as though events had conspired to spare her and Chris.
With the ICN Australian titles not for another two weeks, they could realistically have attended both. But the cost of changing their flights prompted them to cancel the trip altogether.
“We were supposed to go to America from a couple of days ago until the first of November but with my competition, and the training is so full on, I wouldn’t be able to travel and do it,” Marley-Jo said.
“We did try to change our flights around but it was just going to be too expensive.”
It’s just so scary … you just sort of realise that you might not have come home.
- Marley-Jo Collier
She said if changing flights hadn’t been so expensive, or if she hadn’t won last month’s Coff’s Harbour Classic Sports Model category, Marley-Jo and Chris would have been at the festival on the Vegas strip.
“It’s just so scary … you just sort of realise that you might not have come home,” she said.
It’s not the first time Marley-Jo has had a narrow escape.
In August she had planned to travel to Spain but cancelled at the last minute – potentially sparing her from being caught up in the Barcelona terror attacks that killed 16 people.
