Hotel worker surfaces to recount wounding by gunman

LAS VEGAS — The gunman who unleashed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history first wounded an unsuspecting hotel security guard in a hallway, who then promptly radioed for help, according to a TV interview broadcast Wednesday with the guard and a hotel building engineer whose life he is credited with saving.

In his only public recounting of the Oct. 1 shooting that killed 58 people and wounded more than 500, guard Jesus Campos told Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show that he was heading down the hall after calling for a maintenance worker when he heard “rapid fire” gunshots through the nearby doors of Stephen Paddock’s suite in Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

“At first, I took cover. I felt a burning sensation. I went to go lift my pant leg up, and I saw the blood,” Campos said. “That’s when I called it in on my radio that shots had been fired.”

He didn’t say what time that was.

The hotel engineer, Stephen Schuck, who was sent to check a fire exit door that Campos had found bolted shut, told DeGeneres that he didn’t hear gunfire when he reached the opposite end of the 32nd floor hallway. Then, he heard what he thought was the sound of construction.

“I didn’t know it was shooting. I thought it was a jackhammer,” Schuck said. “And, you know, as an engineer, I’m like, ‘We’re not working up here this late at night.’ We wouldn’t be doing that.

“It was, I believe, outside,” he said, referring to gunfire that authorities say Paddock rained down from broken windows into a crowd of 22,000 at a country-music festival. “It wasn’t in the hallway yet.”

Schuck said that Campos leaned out from a door entrance and yelled for him to take cover.

“Within milliseconds, if he didn’t say that, I would have got hit,” Schuck said, describing bullets whizzing past his head.

Police later said that more than 200 shots were fired into the hallway.

Campos, who walked into the interview with a cane, is recovering from a leg wound. Schuck wasn’t injured. Both are on paid leave from their jobs, according to officials at MGM Resorts International, which owns the Mandalay Bay hotel.

The company, police and the FBI declined to comment on the TV appearance.

Campos has been the subject of intrigue in the weeks since he was revealed as the first person to confront Paddock and report the shooting. Contradictory statements from police and hotel officials about when he arrived at the gunman’s room raised questions about the speed of the response from law enforcement and stoked conspiracy theories about the attack.

Police initially said that Campos was shot at 9:59 p.m., several minutes before Paddock started firing from the windows of his suite. They changed the timeline after pushback from MGM Resorts International, saying Campos had arrived on the floor at 9:59 p.m. but wasn’t shot until about 10:05 p.m., about the time the mass shooting began. The first law-enforcement officers arrived at 10:17 p.m., according to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo.

Campos drew more attention last week when, without explanation, he skipped out on television interviews with Fox News and four other media outlets and fell out of contact with the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America union, which was helping him coordinate the appearances.

News reports then referred to him as “missing” and “vanished.” He did not explain why he chose the DeGeneres show to tell his long-awaited story.