MGM: Las Vegas gunman fired on guard, crowd at about same time

LAS VEGAS: The owner of the hotel from which a gunman carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history on Thursday provided a new version of the timeline, suggesting there was no time for hotel staff to warn police.

Stephen Paddock opened fire on Mandalay Bay hotel security guard Jesus Campos and the crowd attending a concert nearby at the same time or within 40 seconds of each other, MGM Resorts International said in a statement. Police have still not determined a motive for the shooting.

That account differed from the updated timeline Las Vegas police provided on Monday, when they said Campos had been shot six minutes before Paddock, 64, opened fire on the crowd from his 32nd-floor suite and killed 58 people on Oct 1.

MGM said on Tuesday the revised police timeline might not be accurate.

A Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokesman, Officer Larry Hadfield, said the police would have no immediate comment on the hotel’s Thursday statement.

The Las Vegas office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation could not immediately be reached for comment.

Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, who oversees the police department, on Wednesday defended the speed of the police response in an interview with the Las Vegas CBS television affiliate.

“No matter what that timeline was, the response was as quick as possible. I don’t think the response could have been any faster,” Lombardo said in a video posted on the station’s LasVegasNow.com website.

The revised timeline police providedonMondayhadraisednew questions, including why Paddock ceased firing on concertgoers once he began, and whether hotel security and police coordinated as well as first believed.

MGM, which owns the Mandalay Bay hotel, said the 9.59pm time when police said Campos was shot was derived from a hotel report created manually after the fact without the benefit of information the hotel now has.

“We are now confident that the time stated in this report is not accurate,” MGM said. — Reuters