Jesus Campos seems to have disappeared, which further throws the investigation into doubt.
Las Vegas law enforcement and Mandalay Bay management continue to dispute the timeline of the mass shooting in Las Vegas continue.
Las Vegas authorities suggest the timeline is not as important as other parts of their investigation.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Stephen Paddock shot Mandalay Bay hotel security guard Jesus Campos six minutes before Paddock began shooting into the crowd below the hotel.
Mandalay Bay believes the shooting happened closer to 40 seconds before Paddock began his mass shooting, but admits that paperwork might have confused the timeline their own staff pieced together.
Meanwhile, Jesus Campos appears to have gone incommunicado, which might be making it harder for both sides to get the information straight.
Jesus Campos’s Version of Events
Jesus Campos states that he called to alert the hotel officials of the gunman before the shooting began. Campos received an alert for an open door on another guest’s room, which brought him to the 32nd floor. Paddock shot an estimated 200 rounds into the hallway. Campos was hit in the leg.
Police, however, did not make it to the room on the 32nd floor where Campos had been shot for over 10 minutes.
By the time Metro Police SWAT personnel arrived, Stephen Paddock had managed to spray bullets onto the Country Music Festival crowd, resulting in 58 deaths and over 500 injuries.
Tom Robert’s Shooting Timeline
The Times interviewed Tom Roberts, the Clark County Assistant Sheriff. Roberts states that Campos called in the shooting before, possibly on a hotel phone in the hallway and that he also used his radio to alert the hotel officials.
Roberts stated that he wasn’t sure of the exact time Campos called hotel officials about the shooter or how long it took the hotel to notify police. The assistant sheriff said, “We just don’t know how long it took him to call.”
The inability to confirm the time has angered some in the public, who believe it would be an easy matter for the police to access their own data on 911 phone calls.
Piecing Together the Evidence
Mandalay Bay admitted that a discrepancy in their paperwork might have caused confusion. The timestamps on the hotel’s communications systems have been inconsistent and inaccurate, not giving investigators’ the ability to build an accurate timeline from the Las Vegas Strip’s end of things.
Roberts expressed to the LA Times that their priority was not in finding the exact timeline. He said police are focused on finding more details about the shooter — and whether or not he had an accomplice.
The investigator said, “The fact the security guard did what he did, when he did it, shortened the amount of time that he was going to be shooting on the crowd, in my opinion. It moved up his timeline.”
Mandalay Bay Shooting Timeline
In the past few days, Las Vegas police changed their timeline of how the massacre started the evening of October 1. The current official timeline for the shooting indicates that the shooting of Campos was about six minutes before the shooting into the crowd began at 10:05pm.
People have begun to ask: if the police timeline was the true, then why did police not arrive at Paddock’s room until after his shooting rampage continued for 10 minutes. If that timeline is correct, then it was 16 minutes after Campos supposedly alerted hotel authorities.
The Metro Police are known to maintain a constant presence on the Las Vegas Strip, because of the potential for violent crime, robberies, and terrorist incidents. Police should not take more than a quarter-of-an-hour to arrive on the scene of a 911 call.
MGM Resorts Statement
The Mandalay Bay did not explain why it disputed the police timeline that was given to the LA Times on Tuesday, but instead said through a spokeswoman, “We cannot be certain about the most recent timeline that has been communicated publicly, and we believe what is currently being expressed may not be accurate.”
The Las Vegas Strip casino emphasized that safety and security of their hotel guests was of utmost importance. Hotel dispatched its own armed security team to the gunman’s room. They arrived around the same time as Las Vegas police, according to Assistant Sheriff Roberts.
The official timeline states they arrived to the floor at 10:17 p.m. after the gunman had already finished his final shots into the crowd at 10:15 p.m. Once police entered the room they found that Stephen Paddock had killed himself.
Attorney Claims Incompetence
Attorney Richard A. Patterson said the latest report of the six-minute delay shows “incompetence” on the part of Mandalay Bay. Patterson, who is an attorney for the victims and the families of those killed or injured in the attack, expressed his frustration with the authorities. The lawyer is said to be planning legal action against MGM Resorts International, the owner of Mandalay Bay and the concert venue below.
Richard Patterson said, “I think everybody’s question is, what if they had gotten there?”
The prominent Las Vegas lawyer wondered aloud, if security had gotten to Paddock’s room sooner, whether many more deaths could have been prevented. At the least, says Patterson, a quicker reaction could have distracted him from the task he set out to do.
There are also questions about the security guards’ recording device, and how alert they were to their duties at the time of the shooting. If the head of security was listening, we could he have not heard the rapid fire of 200 bullets into the hallway?
If so, should that not have sparked a huge emergency response?
Stephen Paddock’s Arsenal
Stephen Paddock doubtless made the SWAT team’s intervention harder, a fact which could have thwarted any response by a casino’s security staff, which naturally has fewer resources and training for modern combat.
Officials found cameras mounted outside Paddock’s hotel room. This allowed Paddock to see anyone coming down the hall, anticipate their moves, and shoot them through the door. The shooter also had a stockpile of equipment in his hotel room. Over 20 guns were found, along with a bullet-proof vest and other equipment. Police investigators recovered more equipment at Paddock’s home.
Jesus Campos Disappears
Adding to the bizarre nature of the story, it appears that Jesus Campos has vanished. David Hickey, the Security, Police, and Fire Professionals of America union president, told the Los Angeles Times, “We have had no contact with him….Clearly, somebody knows where he is.”
