LAS VEGAS _ Police have once again shifted their timeline of how the Oct. 1 massacre unfolded in Las Vegas, saying Friday that a hotel security guard was shot only moments before the gunman shot at a concert crowd _ not six minutes before the attack began, as they had previously stated.
But investigators' latest account still does not resolve questions over why it took police 12 minutes to find the gunman's hotel room when officers were already inside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino when the attack began. Nor does the latest account answer why officers searched other floors in the hotel first if they had received a report from hotel security that the gunman was on the 32nd floor.
In a news conference Friday, an emotional and defensive Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo praised the bravery of his officers and remarked on the difficulty of the investigation while declining to answer questions that have been mounting for a week over how police and hotel officials responded in the aftermath of the attack, which left 58 people dead and injured more than 500.
"The dynamics of this investigation are far-reaching, are wide, are huge," said Lombardo, adding that he had provided preliminary information on the timeline early in the investigation in the hopes of keeping community members calm and informed, only to be receive "cyberspace" criticism "questioning my integrity."
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's shifting accounts of the mass shooting have also provided fuel for conspiracy theorists who, as with many such attacks, have spun unfounded theories about multiple gunmen.
In Friday's news conference, Lombardo amended a timeline he gave Monday in which he had said gunman Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., shot hotel security guard Jesus Campos at 9:59 p.m., six minutes before Paddock started shooting at a concert crowd across the street.
After hotel officials challenged the accuracy of the timeline, Lombardo said Friday that 9:59 p.m. was not necessarily when Campos was shot, but when he encountered a doorway leading to the 32nd floor from a stairwell that Paddock had blocked. The barricade forced Campos to take another route to enter the floor.
It is not known whether Campos called in a report at 9:59 when he had trouble accessing the 32nd floor.
Campos was shot in the leg "in close proximity" to when Paddock started shooting at the crowd at 10:05 p.m., Lombardo said, and Campos then reported the gunman via radio and using his cellphone.
Lombardo reiterated Friday that the first officers arrived on the floor at 10:17 p.m., too late to stop Paddock, who had stopped his 10-minute rampage at 10:15 p.m.
Hotel officials said in a statement Thursday that Campos had reported a gunman as early as 40 seconds before Paddock started shooting at the concert crowd. His report, they said, was received by armed hotel security and police officers who were in the building together and who "immediately" responded to the 32nd floor.
But records of police radio dispatches during the attack do not show any instance of officers at the scene being informed that a security guard had been shot inside the Mandalay Bay, let alone on the 32nd floor.
Radio recordings and previous police accounts indicated that police who zeroed in on the Mandalay Bay after the shooting had searched for the gunman on different floors first.
