How Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock unleashed hell for 72 MINUTES until a SWAT team finally hunted him down
IT took police 72 minutes to find the man who unleashed America's most deadly gun massacre.
Gun smoke which triggered a fire alarm in Stephen Paddock's Las Vegas hotel room led heavily armed SWAT teams to pinpoint exactly where the maniac was launching his killing spree from that left 59 people dead.
At 10.08pm on Sunday night the first reports came in with officers taking 50 minutes to secure the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel where Paddock had created his lair and opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 at a country music festival.
At first music fans had thought the pop-pop-pop noise was a familiar sound - fireworks that would be exploding overhead to celebrate the Route 91 concert.
But instead of bright lights exploding into the sky, people began to fall to the ground, covered in blood.
Men in cowboy hats, women in knee-high boots, ran for their lives.
Around them, people kept falling to the ground, with traumatised witnesses saying they could only watch in horror as victims were peppered with bullets, seemingly out of nowhere.
The shots echoed around the tall buildings lining the Strip, adding to the confusion as to where the bullets were coming from.
As officers arrived at the scene, the first concrete report was through: "We have an active shooter."
Police and emergency services worked fast - within minutes, reports of multiple casualties had come through, with a rough idea of where the shooter was coming through to officers.
According to recordings of police communications, captured by Broadcastify.com, the shots were reported to be coming from Mandalay Bay by 10.12pm - just four minutes after the bullets had begun to shower the innocent crowds.
By 10.13pm, the manhunt focused: "It’s coming from like the 50th or 60th floor, north of the Mandalay Bay! It's coming out a window."
Another report said: "We’re seeing local flashes in the middle of Mandalay Bay on the north side, kind of on the west tower but towards the centre of the casino, like one of the middle floors."
A third: "I'm inside the Mandalay Bay on the 31st floor, I can hear the automatic fire coming from one floor ahead, one floor above us."
What we know so far:
- At least 59 people are dead and more than 500 are injured, making the attack the worst in US history
- The shooter has been named by police as Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, who was firing from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort Casino, and who was found dead
- Police now believe they have found Marilou Danley, 62, a woman believed to have been the roommate of Paddock
- 22,000 people had been attending the Route 91 country music festival, listening to Jason Aldean perform when the shots rang out just after 10pm on Sunday
- US President Trump has slammed the attack as "pure evil", urging Americans to come together in solidarity
- Flights have been delayed with terrified crowds having run for cover to the McCarran International Airport
- Among the dead include a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer who was off duty. Two on-duty officers were also injured
But still, bullets kept coming, with people who instinctively laid down to take cover blasted by the indiscriminate rounds fired from above.
Paddock had smashed through his hotel room's window with a hammer, positioning himself above the festival-goers to cause maximum damage.
Sitting in the luxurious room 32135, he fired round after round.
Having brought in at least ten suitcases into the room, he was surrounded by 23 firearms, including a handgun, with some equipped with scopes.
It wasn't until a fire alarm sounded, 20 minutes into the shooting, that police knew where to go, having initially rushed to the wrong floor.
Retired Las Vegas police lieutenant Randy Sutton told the Washington Post that smoke filled the room as Paddock fired his guns - causing the alarm to sound.
, over the 50 minutes from 10.28pm, police secured the 32nd floor, readying themselves outside the room to take on the shooter.
Paddock, an avid gambler and amateur golf player, shot a security guard in the chaos.
At around 11.20pm officers went in.
Using explosives, they charged into the room and found Paddock dead from a suspected self-inflicted gun wound.
Investigators are now left with the task of trying to figure out just what happened - and what made Paddock snap.
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