From 'shots fired' to all clear: 72 minutes of terror in Las Vegas
The first call came across the Las Vegas radio channel in a burst of static.
"We got shots fired," the police officer said in a breathless voice. "Sounded like an automatic firearm."
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's scanner traffic and body camera video released Tuesday captured officers' frantic efforts to find and stop the gunman firing into a crowd of 22,000 people from a perch high above a music festival.
From the first reports of gunshots at 10:08 p.m. Sunday, it would be 72 chaotic minutes until a SWAT team crept down a carpeted hallway on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel and blew open the room occupied by suspected gunman Stephen Paddock.
By then, the gunfire had long since ceased and Paddock was dead.
Although 72 minutes sounds like an eternity during a shooting, officials and experts on Tuesday insisted that the delay before entering the gunman's hotel room did not suggest a slow response.
