Bullet smashes her love for Las Vegas

Thursday, Aug. 30, 2007 | 8:11 a.m.

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MORRIS

Brittany O'Dale heard the popping noise before she felt the simple, searing heat. And it was quick. She was leaving Margaritaville, then she was flat on the ground, blood blooming through her jeans.

O'Dale was wearing a white veil the night she was shot on the Strip two weeks ago. She was also wearing a sash with a script slogan that ran across her chest: Sexy Little Bride.

When she marries on a Malibu beach next month, she will be carried down the aisle by her father and her groom. She is skipping plans to go scuba diving during her honeymoon on Maui.

Her ordeal began some fuzzy hour after 3 a.m. on Aug. 18, the third night of O'Dale's bachelorette party. The sound of gunfire swallowed the crowd outside O'Shea s, a casino.

The 24-year-old dropped to the ground, turned to a friend and said, "They shot me."

The friend laughed, then scolded her for making a bad joke.

"No," O'Dale said, "I think they shot me."

They looked at her leg and noticed blood pooling on the pavement. That is when the screaming started.

Metro Police say the shooting started with a fight. Like bulls, two men bumped into each other. Words were exchanged. Then blows. A group brawl broke out. People threw bottles and cans until someone fired a gun. Everybody ran.

Four bystanders were injured, although O'Dale didn't see the others. She was hoisted up by two men and carried to a green felt gaming table, where she was spread out like so many cards, bleeding.

O'Dale said she had two thoughts, in this order: How soon could she speak to her fiance, Russ Ming, who was in Washington, D.C., on a business trip? And, could somebody call her crummy health insurance and report that she had been shot in the shin?

A man ripped off his shirt and tried to tie it around O'Dale's wound. The pain was unbearable. A vacationing nurse, whose name O'Dale never got, came to the table, took her hand and started whispering that everything would be all right.

It would and it wouldn't.

All four of the injured were whisked to a hospital. Three were soon released. Not O'Dale. She was taken straight into surgery, where a titanium rod was threaded along her broken tibia. She woke up in a cast. Her fiance flew in, her mother drove over from Southern California.

Police collected the extracted bullet as evidence. They found the gun that shot O'Dale ; now they're trying to find it s owner.

O'Dale left the hospital after three days to go to Malibu to prepare for - to change - the Sept. 15 wedding

It will be 10 weeks until she can put any pressure on her leg ; so for starters, she can't really stand without crutches. Her beach wedding won't accommodate a wheelchair, either - the wheels won't glide smoothly enough through sand to satisfy the bride. So she will be carried. To make the spectacle special, she is thinking of having her father carry her half way down the aisle and then hand her off to Ming, who will take her the rest of the way.

O'Dale's dress is long enough to cover the air-cast, but what of the photos? Can she stand long enough to pose?

Oh, and the father-daughter dance after ? Not happening.

O'Dale spent a year planning the wedding. "I haven't really broken down and gotten really upset yet," she said. "But I know it's coming."

Just not in front of her 100 guests, she hopes.

Then there is the matter of the Maui honeymoon. Ming got scuba certification so the couple could dive together. They also planned to take long bike rides and explore the tropical island.

"Sounds perfect, right?" O'Dale says. "It's just going to be a lot of sitting." The couple is considering whether they want to have a honeymoon.

One thing they know for certain: They're done with Las Vegas.

Ming was going to hold his bachelor party on the Strip this weekend, but he canceled it. The idea of celebrating his days as a bachelor in the city where his fiancee nearly died cut too close to the bone.

O'Dale feels the same.

"It's one of my favorite cities, and I'll never go back."