Massacre was ‘like shooting fish in a bowl’

AT least 50 people were killed and more than 200 injured after a shooter strafed concertgoers at a country music festival with automatic gunfire on the Las Vegas strip last night.

Police shot dead a Nevada man on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel and Resort, about 30 minutes after the massacre started around 10pm local time on Sunday.

Chilling video footage showed the crowd at the closing act of the three-day Route 91 Harvest country music festival fleeing automatic gunfire coming from a hotel room above them. “It was a horror show,” said Ivetta Saldana, who was at the Jason Aldean concert with a friend.

“People were standing around then they hit the floor.”

One police officer was in critical condition and two others were feared dead, according to Las Vegas Sheriff Joe Lombardi. “We believe there is a couple of off duty officers that were attending the concert who may have been killed,” he said.

Sheriff Lombardi said police were looking for a female roommate of the shooter, identified as former Nerang woman Marilou Danley.

Police said they had located Ms Danley a couple of hours later, but gave no further information.

The gunman fired from a room on the 32nd floor of the 43-storey Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, across Las Vegas Blvd from the outdoor concert. Witness Meghan Kearney said she saw “hundreds of bodies” as she fled shots that “sounded like they were coming from the sky”.

“We heard what sounded like firecrackers going off, like someone setting off a firecracker,” concertgoer Ms Kearney told NBC news.

“We heard what sounded like a machine gun and people just started to scream that they were hit and to get down.

“About 20 seconds after that, you would hear a round of machine gunfire and people just dropping and hundreds of bodies all over the ground.”

Ms Kearney said organisers spoke of there being 30,000 in the crowd. She described the sickening sound of rounds of machine gun fire followed by a break as the shooter reloaded.

“In the moment, it felt like forever but probably you would hear that around 30 times, of what just sounded like a machine gun, one after another, after another,” she said. “We finally kind of heard a break and got up and just started running, hoping they were not going to hit us. We just started running and we were able to go into a back service door and just hide.

“That’s what we are doing now, hiding in a nearby hotel.”

Sheriff Lombardi said at least 50 were killed and more than 200 injured. An off duty firefighter at the concert said he “personally pronounced 20 dead”. The firefighter said “with 30,000 in the arena ... it was like shooting goldfish in a bowl”. “It’s a sad day for Las Vegas,” he said.

A triage centre was set up nearby as dozens were rushed by ambulance to the nearby University Medical Centre.

A hospital spokeswoman confirmed at least two deaths with dozens of critically injured patients.

Planes were diverted from the nearby McCarren International Airport out of concern they would be hit by gunfire, and police closed off 1.5km of Las Vegas Boulevard.

Just before midnight, Las Vegas police confirmed one suspect was killed in a room at Mandalay Bay resort. Witnesses said there were many casualties within the grounds of the Mandalay Bay, a sprawling four star hotel at the southern end of the Strip.

In the chaos, there were concerns of at least one other shooter in a nearby hotel.

Professional poker player and Instagram celebrity Dan Bilzerian, who was at the concert, said that he saw a girl die.

“This girl just got shot in the head,” Bilzerian posted.

“So crazy … So I had to go grab a gun, I’m heading back … Some kind of mass shooting … Guy had a heavy calibre weapon for sure … Saw a girl get shot in the face right next to me, her brains hanging out.”

Another witness said “bullets were flying everywhere”, sparking a stampede from the grounds. “They were firing from somewhere high and they were unloading clip after clip after clip after clip,” the man told local radio.

A female concertgoer added: “we all got on the floor, crawling out, rushing.”

The gunfire sparked chaos in the crowd. “The band ran off stage and it was pandemonium,” attendee Jon Bessette told NBC News.

“Everyone was running, people were getting trampled.”

An Australian witness staying at the Mandalay Bay hotel told CNN there was mayhem following the sound of machine gun fire.

“The initial gun shots were machine gun fire,” he said. “We knew it was chaos and mayhem because people were running out of everywhere.”

He also described the confusion when police came across a group of guests taking cover.

“We were tucked away, about 12 of us, in a carpark thing, and the SWAT team came and said hands up,” he said. “We didn’t know where the shooter (was). We knew (the police) were confused like we were. Police ushered us out.”

Las Vegas is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the US, drawing 40 million visitors each year, among them 364,000 Australians.

THEY WERE FIRING FROM SOMEWHERE HIGH AND THEY WERE UNLOADING CLIP AFTER CLIP AFTER CLIP AFTER CLIP