Vegas timeline paperwork ‘wrong’
The corporate owners of the Mandalay Bay hotel are blaming a paperwork snafu for reports claiming they waited six minutes to call cops after Las Vegas mass killer Stephen Paddock began his shooting spree.
Police have said Paddock fired his first shots at hotel security guard Jesus Campos and maintenance worker Stephen Schuck at 9:59 p.m. on Oct. 1.
That would mean Paddock’s attack on hotel staffers took place six minutes before he opened fire on music fans at the Route 91 Harvest Festival 32 floors below, killing 58 and wounding nearly 500 in the worst mass shooting in modern US history.
The implication of a 9:59 p.m. shooting would be that Mandalay Bay staffers waited six minutes to call cops after the two men radioed them.
But MGM, corporate owners of Mandalay Bay, is now claiming the timeline put out by cops is wrong.
MGM said Thursday that the hotel employees were actually shot only about 40 seconds before Paddock turned his guns on the festival crowd at 10:05 p.m. — and that they immediately radioed in what had happened and that hotel security then immediately called cops.
They claimed that police got the mistaken 9:59 p.m. time from a Mandalay Bay report filled out in error by a clerical staffer.
“The 9:59 p.m. PDT time was derived from a Mandalay Bay report manually created after the fact without the benefit of informa- tion we now have,” according to a company statement.
“We are now confident that the time stated in this report is not accurate.”
The shooting timeline has had changed several times.
Police first said Campos encountered Paddock after he opened fire on the crowd. That led to speculation that the guard prompted Paddock to stop shooting.
But cops on Monday revised the account to say Campos encountered Paddock six minutes before Paddock shot at concertgoers.
MGM began its pushback against the 9:59 p.m. timeline on Tuesday, saying the sequence from cops “may not be accurate.”
Police are set to release an updated timeline Friday.
Local and federal authorities are still struggling to determine Paddock’s motive.
“There’s a lot of effort being put into unraveling this horrific act,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters at a ribbon-cutting for the FBI’s new Atlanta offices.