By Ken Ritter
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — More police body camera footage made public Wednesday shows officers directing concertgoers to safety and searching for what they thought were multiple shooters inside and outside a Las Vegas Strip hotel where a gunman firing from upper-floor windows killed 58 people and injured hundreds on Oct. 1.
Eight more video recordings, totaling almost eight hours, from the deadliest mass shooting in the nation’s modern history were released by Las Vegas police under a court order in a public records lawsuit by media including The Associated Press.
One shows a team of police starting on the roof of the Mandalay Bay resort and working their way downstairs.
Another shows officers directing people to evacuate from beneath the main stage of the Route 91 Harvest Festival venue. Two men rush past, carrying an injured woman.
Another showed teams with rifles ushering people out of concrete flood-control channels.
As with previous records released in batches since May 2, the videos show tension, tenderness, chaos and heartbreak following the shooting outside the Mandalay Bay resort. They do not shed new light on a motive.
Police and the FBI have said they believe former accountant and high-stakes gambler Stephen Paddock acted alone to amass an arsenal of weapons in his Mandalay Bay suite before opening fire into the concert crowd below.
Officials have said the attack had no link to international terrorism, but hotel owner MGM Resorts International last week invoked a provision of a federal law enacted after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The company wants federal courts to qualify the shooting as an act of terrorism and to declare the company has no liability to survivors or families of slain victims.
Body camera recordings released earlier showed officers using explosives to blast through the door to find Paddock dead on the floor from a self-inflicted gunshot. Weapons fitted with rapid-fire “bump stock” devices were strewn about in the suite.
Other police records have included witness accounts, audio recordings and snippets of 911 calls and police radio traffic, and hotel, helicopter and streetscape surveillance video from Las Vegas Strip.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, the elected head of the police department, has said he expected to update his January preliminary report with a final report by August.
Sgt. Jeff Clark, a department spokesman, said Wednesday the report is not yet complete.