Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Las Vegas sheriff shifts massacre timeline again
LAS VEGAS — Police have once again shifted their timeline of how the Oct. 1 massacre unfolded in Las Vegas, saying Friday that a hotel security guard was shot only moments before the gunman shot at a concert crowd —not six minutes before the attack began, as they had previously stated.
But investigators’ latest account still does not resolve questions over why it took police 12 minutes to find the gunman’s hotel room when officers were already inside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino when the attack began. Nor does the latest account answer why officers searched other floors in the hotel first if they had received a report from hotel security that the gunman was on the 32nd floor.
In a news conference Friday, an emotional and defensive Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo praised his officers’ bravery. The investigation, he said, has determined that the gunman deliberately aimed his weapons at police as they arrived at the scene where 21,000 country music festival patrons were fleeing in panic.
But the sheriff declined to answer questions that have been mounting for a week over how police and hotel officials responded in the aftermath of the attack, which left 58 people dead. Lombardo again revised the number of injured, to 546, with 45 people still hospitalized, including some in critical condition.
“The dynamics of this investigation are far-reaching, are wide, are huge,” said Lombardo, adding that he had provided preliminary information on the timeline early on in hopes of keeping the community calm and informed, only to receive “cyberspace” criticism “questioning my integrity.”
“Nobody is attempting to hide anything in reference to this investigation,” Lombardo said.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s shifting accounts of the shooting have provided fuel for conspiracy theorists who have spun unfounded theories about multiple gunmen.
Lombardo described how the gunman opened fire on nearby airport jet fuel tanks and on police officers arriving at the scene.
In Friday’s news conference, Lombardo amended a timeline he gave Monday in which he had said Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., shot hotel security guard Jesus Campos at 9:59 p.m., six minutes before Paddock started shooting at the crowd across the street.
After hotel officials challenged the accuracy of the timeline, Lombardo said Friday that 9:59 p.m. was not necessarily when Campos was shot, but when he encountered a doorway leading to the 32nd floor from a stairwell that Paddock had blocked. The barricade forced Campos to take another route to enter the floor.
It is not known whether Campos called in a report at 9:59 when he had trouble accessing the 32nd floor.
Campos was shot in the leg “in close proximity” to when Paddock started shooting at the crowd at 10:05 p.m., Lombardo said, and Campos then reported the gunman via radio and using his cellphone.
Lombardo reiterated Friday that the first officers arrived on the floor at 10:17 p.m., too late to stop Paddock, who had stopped his 10-minute rampage at 10:15 p.m.
Officials continued to say that they have found no sign of a motive for Paddock despite hundreds of interviews, copious video footage and an ongoing search of Paddock’s electronic devices, which is being undertaken with help from hundreds of special agents from the FBI.
A preliminary examination of the suspect’s brain didn’t reveal anything unusual, Lombardo said, but the organ has been shipped to a special lab for analysis.