Mandalay Bay security guard Jesse Campos has broken his silence on The Ellen Show about what happened before Stephen Paddock opened fire on an outdoor concert in Las Vegas. Campos sparked intrigue after he cancelled numerous media appearances, but told Ellen DeGeneres that he’s been “healing physically and mentally.”
He appeared along side with building engineer Stephen Schuck, who went to investigate why the fire door on the 31st floor was blocked.
Campos told Ellen that he had been sent to inspect an open door on the 32nd floor, which is the location of Paddock’s room. He tried to access the floor from the 31st floor, but noticed “the stairwell door was blocked.” From Fox News:
“There was a metal bracket holding the door in place,” Campos said, describing how he was blocked trying to enter the 32nd floor from a stairwell right next to Paddock’s room. “That was just out of the ordinary. It’s not normal.”
He managed to get on the floor via elevator and called security, who sent Schuck to investigate the door. Campos walked down the hallway and heard rapid fire:
I took cover. I felt a burning sensation. I went to go lift my pant leg up and I saw the blood,” he recalled. “That’s when I called it in on my radio that shots had been fired.”Around the same time, Schuck was making his way to the floor from a service elevator to check on the door. However, he started to hear what he thought was a jackhammer, which struck him as strange because he didn’t think they would be doing work on the floor so late. Campos saw his colleague and warned him to take cover as well as another woman who was staying on the floor and had come out from her room.”I want to thank first responders and people on the ground of the show helping each other out,” Schuck said. “I think the acts of humanity were major that night.”As he continued, “I want to thank Jesus again from my family and all my friends and everybody for saving my life.”
Last Friday, Professor Jacobson blogged about how the police and the hotel still cannot agree on some details regarding the shooting. There have been three versions out now over when security reached Paddock’s room on the 32nd floor:
But it didn’t take very long for the Las Vegas police to release a precise timeline. The initial timeline was that Stephen Paddock’s shooting stopped when, approximately 6 minutes after he started, he was interrupted by a security guard from the Mandalay Bay hotel. Paddock then turned his fire into the hallway, firing some 200 bullets, and after that the shooting stopped as police arrived. That was Version No. 1.Some days later, the Las Vegas police backed away from that timeline, and stated that the security guard actually arrived 6 minutes before Paddock started shooting into the crowd 32 stories below him. That raised a number of question, including why no one called 911 after what must have been a loud volley of shots in a hotel hallway. That was Version No. 2.
Then on October 13th, the police said that Campos found the blocked door at 9:59PM and Paddock fired upon him “‘in close proximity to’ 10:05 p.m., when the mass shooting began.” So now that six minute gap does not exist.
The hotel says that security arrived sooner than that (emphasis mine):
Las Vegas police say they didn’t get to the floor until after the shooting was over. But MGM Resorts International, the owner of Mandalay Bay, says police officers were there shortly after the shooting began, responding to a report of a security guard being shot. The discrepancy could raise questions about whether police might have taken steps to intervene while Paddock was launching his devastating 10-minute onslaught….… on Thursday, in response to inquiries about when Mandalay Bay notified police of the Campos shooting, MGM Resorts issued a statement that was unequivocal: Las Vegas police officers accompanied Mandalay Bay security to the Campos shooting and “immediately responded.” MGM said that “Metro officers were together with armed Mandalay Bay security officers in the building when Campos first reported that shots were fired over the radio. These Metro officers and armed Mandalay Bay security officers immediately responded to the 32nd floor.” The statement says MGM believes Paddock began firing out the window of his room within 40 seconds of Campos reporting his shooting, and Lombardo said Friday, “I agree with the statement.”
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