Police Officers Detail Las Vegas Shooting on ’60 Minutes’

The law enforcement officers from the Las Vegas shooting detailed their accounts of the horrific night of Oct. 1.

The four officers that were the first on the scene at the gunman Stephen Paddock‘s hotel room in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino explained what happened on 60 Minutes on Sunday night.

Las Vegas Sheriff Joe Lombardo also sat down with 60 Minutes and discussed the shooting. Lombardo said the officers arrived at the hotel room within 12 minutes from the moment the shooting started.

“I think they prevented 1,000 deaths,” Lombardo said.

An unarmed security guard was the first one on the scene at the hotel room. Soon after, a small group of police officers arrived and formed a S.W.A.T. team storming into room 135 on the 32nd floor.

One week ago just after 10 p.m., 22,000 concertgoers were in the middle of the deadliest attack in modern U.S. history.

Read on the learn about the police officer’s first hand accounts of the attack at the Route 91 Harvest Festival.

Police Officer’s First Hand Accounts

Las Vegas Detective Casey Clarkson was down at the location where the shooting occurred. He said the gun fire started hitting them and the bullets were “raining down.”

Detective Matthew Donaldson was doing paperwork at the station and sped nine miles to get to the shooting location. He kicked off his cowboy boots and ran to the danger zone barefoot. 

Sergeant Joshua Bitkso and officer David Newton from the K9 unit alongside Donaldson and a S.W.A.T. officer were the first to arrive at the hotel room. They were getting details on where the shooter was prior to their approach. 

Bitkso and Netwon tried to enter through a stairwell, but Paddock had barricaded it shut. Luckily for them, one of the officers had a tool to break down the door.  

They were being told to watch for booby traps. Paddock knew the officers would be coming, but they didn’t know where he was going to be. 

Around 11 p.m. they made a plan because they hadn’t heard gun fire for a few moments. The group ended up blowing out the door of Paddock’s hotel room and stormed in. 

What Was Inside the Room?

The officers were stunned by the amount of guns and ammunition that was inside of the hotel room. 

Everything was neatly stacked in suitcases and hidden behind pillars. There were rifles placed all throughout the room. There were also monitors and electrical equipment in the room that led the officers to believe he had been planning this for days and weeks. 

“It looked like a gun store,” one officer said with another adding, “We were tripping over guns, tripping over long guns inside.”

Paddock also had a lot of drills and tools inside the room. Based on the amount of weaponry Paddock had in his room, the officers believe he was ready to fight back against law enforcement.

Where Was Stephen Paddock?

When they entered Paddock’s room on the 32nd floor, the officers found his body on the ground.

At first one of the officers said he didn’t see any “apparent wounds to his head, but I did see a lot of body that had come out of his mouth.” There was a bloody revolver next to him that was consistent with him shooting himself.

They also found a note on the night stand that had written distances and elevations on it that Paddock used to determine how far and where to shot.

“I did notice– a note on the nightstand near– his shooting platform,” Newton said. ‘”I could see on it he had written the distance, the elevation he was on, the drop of what his bullet was going to be for the crowd. So he had that written down and figured out so he would know where to shoot to hit his targets from there.”

The officer added, “He had written, he must have done the calculations or gone online or something to figure out of what his altitude was going to be and how high up he was – how far out the crowd was going to be and what at that distance and what the drop of his bullet was going to be. He hadn’t written out the calculations all he had was written out the final numbers that were on the sheet.”