TEWKSBURY, Mass. — A heartbroken mother’s first thought on the day after her daughter was killed in the Las Vegas massacre was that she’ll never see her baby girl again.
“I never thought in a million years it could happen here,” Priscilla Champagne told Boston 25 News Tuesday. “Like the Boston Marathon, I thought we were smarter because of those things. That these things wouldn’t happen again. That was senseless.”
Champagne’s daughter, Rhonda LeRocque, was one of 59 people shot and killed at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas Sunday night.
MORE: IMAGES: Tewksbury mother killed in Vegas shooting
Almost 600 other people were injured in the shooting when bullets rained down from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel across the street from the country music concert.
Rhonda LeRocque's mother: "She was a joy to raise. I loved her so much". Tewksbury mother died during Las Vegas mass shooting. @boston25 pic.twitter.com/4qq13Y0sYn
— Stephanie Coueignoux (@StephanieCNews) October 3, 2017
LeRocque, a Tewksbury mother, was in the crowd when she was shot in the back of the head. Her 6-year-old daughter had just left the show with LeRocque’s father-in-law when the shooting started.
“No mother deserves to get a phone call like that about their baby,” Champagne said Tuesday. “She was enjoying country music and they were going to Disney and they were going to take their baby girl to Disney.”
LeRocque’s family told Boston 25 News Monday she had been killed in the shooting, but needed time before speaking about it publicly.
Rhonda LeRocque worked at IDEO in Cambridge and met her husband through Kingdom Hall.
“They were the perfect little family,” Champagne said. “Rhonda touched everybody. Everybody loved Rhonda. I don’t think you could find one person who could say a bad thing about Rhonda.”
The trip to Vegas was supposed to be a fun family vacation. But the loss of Rhonda and her husband, Jason, has hit their community back home hard. He's a minister at Kingdom Hall in Wilmington.
“I loved her so much,” Champagne said. “She was a loving, kind, sweet daughter.”
MORE: 'It just didn't make sense': Tewksbury mother killed in Vegas
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