Las Vegas massacre timeline shifts again

LAS VEGAS — The Las Vegas police again revised the timeline of the Oct. 1 shooting at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, saying Friday that Stephen Paddock shot at a security guard on his hotel floor at approximately the same time he began to spray bullets on the crowd below.

The gunman shot the guard, Jesus Campos, at about 10:05 p.m., said Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, not at 9:59 p.m., as he had told reporters on Monday.

The announcement came a day after MGM Resorts, which owns Mandalay Bay, disputed the police department’s timeline, saying in a statement that the 9:59 time had come from a hotel report “manually created after the fact” and was not accurate.

During a short news conference Friday, the sheriff said he was “absolutely offended,” by allegations of incompetence within the department, and said that the shifting timeline was a result of the vast scope of the investigation, and not an attempt to mislead anyone about the circumstances of the attack.

“This is a very dynamic event,” he said. “A very big event. Thousands of people involved in documentation.”

Paddock, a high-stakes gambler, hauled powerful weapons into the gold-paneled hotel and casino, pointed them out the window of a 32nd-floor suite and shot at thousands of people below.

Police said 59 people were killed and nearly 500 injured.