Vegas shooting survivors with mental trauma won't get any of the $22M victims fund

The deadliest mass shooting in modern American history left 58 dead and hundreds injured, but thousands of the other traumatized victims won’t be able to get settlements from the record-breaking $22 million fund set up to help them, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Those suffering psychological trauma from the Oct. 1 shooting at a Las Vegas country music festival with 22,000 attendees won’t be eligible for claims under the final terms of the fund, announced Friday. Instead, claims eligible for payouts fall into three categories, which have not been given final dollar amounts yet: deaths, physical injuries resulting in overnight hospitalization, and physical injuries treated by outpatient facilities or healthcare providers.

Local officials set up a GoFundMe page Oct. 2, and more than 88,000 individual donors gave to make it the site’s highest-earning campaign ever, at more than $11.5 million and still growing. And there was more than $10 million in other private, corporate, and non-profit donations to the fund.

The fund decided on its final process after hosting two town halls in November and reviewing over 1,700 public comments.

“It is our desire to recognize and honor all of those whose lives have been forever altered as a result of the horrific events of 1 October, and we recognize the incredible needs of those experiencing psychological trauma,” Scott Nielson, a former casino executive and chairman of the fund, said in a statement Friday. “The overwhelming number of victims prevents us from providing individual monetary payments to those suffering psychological trauma, though we are committed to identifying mental health services to assist this critical segment of the survivor population."

The fund’s GoFundMe page had $11,725,700 as of Monday, and will continue fundraising until at least the end of January, with a final goal of $15 million.

The prior largest GoFundMe campaign raised a bit over $7.8 million for victims of the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.

An earlier version of this story misstated the value of the GoFundMe for Las Vegas shooting victims. As of publication, the GoFundMe was worth almost $12 million. The entire Las Vegas fund, including the GoFundMe, stands at around $22 million.