Las Vegas Police have released the first body camera footage from Sunday night’s shooting that left 58 dead and more than 500 wounded. The video shows the chaos as officers outside of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino try to figure out where the gunfire is coming from as bullets rain down from inside the building at the Route 91 Harvest concert festival.
Police officials said the video is a compilation of footage from multiple body cameras. You can watch the video above and also below, with narration from a police official.
“There’s a significant amount of body worn camera footage that we are going through,” Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said at a press conference Tuesday. “I’m going to play a clip … for you of a compilation of a number of those body worn cameras. You’ll see that the officers were dealing with some uncooperative citizens at times, but all times they were trying to locate the source of the gunfire as well as evacuate those citizens that were in the line of fire. I think the video will speak for itself.”
The video begins with officers hunkered down behind a wall facing Mandalay Bay after an “initial volley of shots,” McMahill said. The officers can be seen telling people to go the other direction and then trying to figure out where the gunshots are coming from. In another part of the video, officers can be seen taking cover behind a patrol car, and pulling a citizen to safety.
GettyLas Vegas police stand guard along the streets outside the Route 91 Harvest Country music festival groundss of the Route 91 Harvest on October 1, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, of Mesquite, Nevada, used multiple guns, including rifles with “bump stocks” that simulate automatic fire, to attack the concert festival from inside a room on the 34th floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. The gunfire, which began about 10 p.m., lasted for 9 to 11 minutes, police said. Paddock fatally shot himself before a SWAT team breached his door about 72 minutes after the first shots were fired.
The concert festival was taking place in an outdoor area across from the Mandalay Bay and Luxor casinos on the famed Las Vegas Strip. A video taken by someone at the concert shows the moment when gunfire, described by police and witnesses as coming from an automatic weapon, erupted, with several shots fired in rapid succession:
According to police scanner transmissions, 72 minutes passed between the first shots fired and when officers breached the hotel room where Paddock was holed up. Police believe he was firing into the crowd for about 9 to 11 minutes.
Videos show the area from where he was shooting from:
Aerial footage shows window on 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay hotel where suspect fired from. t.co/SnJlcmIcuT
First look at the 32nd floor where the shooter fired down onto the conert-goers t.co/rszdpxcb3W
WATCH: Bursts of gunfire visible from window in Mandalay Bay casino; suspect confronted/killed on 32nd floor: t.co/VGQ5okkuYe
These maps show where the shooting occurred:
Made a map to show how far the shooter was from Mandalay Bay #vegasshooting #LasVegas #route91
You can listen to police scanner audio from the moment officers entered the room below:
Audio from LVMPD as they breach room 135 on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay to take out gunman
About 22,000 fans were in the fairgrounds area, where there were multiple stages and other areas set up for the festival, according to The Associated Press. Concertgoer Kodiak Yazzi, 36, told the AP that the music stopped temporarily after a sound that was like a firecracker. It then started up again before another round of pops sent performers ducking for cover and fleeing the stage, while panicked fans also rushed for the exits. Yazzi told the AP he took cover and saw flashes of light coming from the Mandalay Bay hotel tower above the concert. He said the bursts would start and stop for about five minutes.
The concert festival was in its third day. The festival’s website showed that performers Sunday night included Jake Owen and Luke Combs, along with Jason Aldean, took the stage about 9:40 p.m. and survived. A video shows Aldean singing and playing a guitar as gunshots ring out. He briefly continues to perform, before stopping and running off the stage. You can watch the video below:
#BREAKING VIDEO: Jason Aldean on stage as a gunman begins to fire upon crowd in Las Vegas #vegasshooting #Vegas #mandalaybay
More than 40 of the 58 victims killed in the shooting have been identified so far. You can read their names, learn their stories and see their photos here.
