Stories of chaos, courage and compassion have been revealed in police reports made public seven months after the mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival.
Some 1,200 pages of reports were made public by Las Vegas police following a US court order.
They described the experiences of witnesses and victims on 1 October last year, when Stephen Paddock opened fire from the 32nd floor of a hotel, killing 58 people and injuring more than 800.
Paddock later killed himself before he could be arrested.
About 22,000 people were attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival concert that night, and many told police that they initially thought the gunshots were firecrackers.
One woman (names are blacked out in the police documents) told police: “There was a noise to our right.
“And everybody just kept yelling, like: ‘Oh, it’s fireworks’.
“A couple of seconds later, um, I fell to the ground and I couldn’t feel my arm.”
In her statement, reported in US media, she added: “Within seconds of that, like, the second round of bullets came through and everybody just hit the ground.”
Another woman said: “I was laying next to my mom and she said: ‘I got hit, I got hit’.
“I then saw blood come out of her mouth.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, one statement was from a man who described being at the concert with his wife and daughter. His wife was shot in the back.
“I made my kids run and tried helping my wife,” he wrote. “Others also started CPR and managed to put her on a table and carried her out to Reno and Haven St.
“She didn’t make it.”
Another man told police he had been with a woman who was shot, saying: “Then it dawns on me. I’m like: ‘There’s obviously an active shooter.
“You know, you literally – I just kicked into a mode of ‘We have to get out of here’.”
He had helped the woman to a nearby limousine and the vehicle’s driver had taken them to hospital.
The woman later recalled hospital hallways full of stretchers, saying: “They couldn’t get names of everybody just because there were so many people.”
The release of the records was controversial. Police had fought the media’s request, saying it was costly, time-consuming and could reveal investigation techniques.
They had also said the investigation into the shooting is not finished and the information could “further traumatise” the community.
But back in February, Clark County District Court Judge Richard Scotti had ruled that police must release the documents, saying the public had a right to know if police were doing their job properly.
Detectives are still trying to establish the motive for Paddock’s attack.
From – SkyNews
