The worst mass shooting in U.S. history — in Las Vegas — resonated 2,700 miles and a time zone away on Monday, where island officials mourned the deaths of 59 victims and offered support for the more than 500 people who were wounded on Hawaii’s so-called “ninth island.”

“This is a very difficult time for Las Vegas, one of the darkest days in our history,” said David Strow, spokesman for Boyd Gaming, which owns 13 Las Vegas properties including the California Hotel, which markets itself with the phrase, “Aloha spoken here.”

“It does mean a lot to us that our thoughts and prayers are in the minds of people in Hawaii,” Strow said.

There were no immediate reports of island victims among the dead.

However, Ashley Quiocho, a 33-year-old Honolulu-born cocktail waitress who lives in Las Vegas, was shot in the right hand and right buttock, and suffered some minor wounds to her legs. (See accompanying story.)

On Sunday night, Isaiah Fonoti-Paau, 17, originally of Wahiawa, had just left the Pure Aloha Festival with his parents, Lole and Chris, who moved to Las Vegas two years ago for Lole’s cancer treatments. They were driving onto Tropicana Avenue toward the Mandalay Bay hotel and the scene of Sunday’s mass killing when they heard “what sounded like soft bangs,” Fonoti-Paau said. “The closer that we got, it kept getting louder and louder. We heard so many of them — pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.”

Then “we kept seeing these ambulances, six at a time speeding from the hospital toward Mandalay Bay,” he said. “It was crazy. The ambulances were literally circling back and forth to the hospital.”

Gov. David Ige and Mayor Kirk Caldwell both invoked the term “ninth island” to offer their condolences in separate statements on Monday, when the scope of Sunday night’s shooting by a lone gunman firing from the Mandalay Bay onto concertgoers along the Las Vegas Strip was being realized across the country.

“I am shocked and terribly saddened by the news of an unbelievable act of mass murder in Las Vegas,” Ige said. “We call it the Ninth Island because we have so many family and friends living there, and most of us have visited the city for entertainment or business purposes. Today, we grieve with those who have lost loved ones and pray for the injured.”

Caldwell’s statement said, in part, that “Hawaii’s connection to Las Vegas is strong and we send our heartfelt aloha to our ‘Ninth Island’ during this difficult time.”

The two communities — one surrounded by water that outlaws gambling and the other a landlocked city that embraces its “Sin City” reputation — have had a special relationship for generations. The bond was inspired in part by Sam Boyd, who lived and worked in Hawaii in the 1930s before going on to found the California Hotel and Boyd Gaming.

Untold numbers of island residents trained in the hospitality industry have been recruited over the years to resorts and casinos in Las Vegas, where land and homes are much cheaper but the temperatures more extreme.

For whatever reason, “A lot of folks from Hawaii end up moving to Vegas,” Strow said.

One of them was card dealer Tara Spangler, originally from Paia, Maui, who was working at Las Vegas’ Hooters Casino Hotel when dozens of frantic people suddenly ran in Sunday night.

“I had no idea what was going on,” Spangler, 32, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser by phone.

About 10 to 15 seconds later, another wave of people ran into the casino, followed by a third wave of people who had blood on them, she said. Someone from the crowd told her, “There’s an active shooter with a machine gun!”

Spangler, the mother of two girls, ages 4 and 5, immediately fled. “All I could think of is my kids,” she said.

She initially fled to an area where valets stored items. Soon after, she and a valet ran toward the rooftop of the hotel where she heard rapid gunshots. “It was like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.”

Spangler and the man ran back downstairs and into a storage room closet. “You can hear everybody screaming in the casino,” she said.

At some point, she left the closet and saw at least 15 to 20 people inside Hooters had gunshot wounds. “There were some people who had blood on them but it wasn’t theirs,” Spangler said. “It was really surreal. … It was like a scene out of a zombie movie.”

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said people wishing to donate can visit the Las Vegas Victims’ Fund established on GoFundMe.com by Steve Sisolak, which has been vetted. The department has set up a public information line at 1-800-536-9488.

On Monday, at the direction of President Donald Trump, Ige ordered the U.S. and Hawaii state flags to be flown at half-staff until sunset Friday to honor the victims.

Staff writers Allison Schaefers and Jason Genegabus contributed to this report.