A new video has been released that reveals two police officers waited one floor below the Vegas shooter for almost five minutes until the firing had stopped.
From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Newly released body camera footage shows two Las Vegas police officers holding their position in a hallway one floor beneath the Oct. 1 gunman for nearly five minutes as rounds are continually fired into the Route 91 Harvest festival crowd below.
Officer Cordell Hendrex utters an expletive on the video while on the 31st floor, reacting to the sound of rapid gunfire, which he later described in a report as being “like thunder all around and above us.”
Four and a half minutes would pass between the moment Hendrex and his first-day trainee, Elif Varsin, stepped out from an elevator into the hallway in the middle of the mass shooting and what would be the final volley of gunfire.
Here’s a short version of the video released by the Journal:
Here’s how LVRJ describes the full video:
The first 30 seconds of footage contain no audio, but about 22 seconds in, the officers can be seen walking out of the security office and onto the casino floor, accompanied by the three armed guards. A few seconds later, the audio cuts in, and the words “active shooter” can be heard in the background.
For about two minutes, the group walks past slot machines and casino patrons as police radio transmissions describe what is unfolding at the festival grounds. It is not until another officer broadcasts over police radio that shots are coming from Mandalay Bay that the group begins running and makes it to an elevator, hopping in front of hotel guests waiting with their luggage.
Inside the elevator, the group discusses the 32nd floor — where the shooter is located — and the 31st floor. For unknown reasons, Hendrex and Varsin get out on the 31st floor with the armed guards, pistols drawn.
The next nearly five minutes take place in a hallway on the 31st floor, directly beneath the gunman.
Nearly two minutes after the group arrives on the 31st floor, Hendrex announces his position over police radio.
“I’m inside the Mandalay Bay on the 31st floor,” he says. “I can hear the automatic fire coming from one floor ahead, one floor above us.”
About 20 seconds later, the group hears a transmission from an officer on the ground: “Multiple GSWs (gunshot wounds) to the chest, leg, femoral arteries in the medical tent.”
As the transmission ends, Hendrex suddenly takes several steps backward, then dips behind an alcove next to a hotel room door. His trainee and the guards do the same.
“I know I hesitated and I remember being terrified with fear and I think that I froze right there in the middle of the hall for how long I can’t say,” Hendrex would later write in his report.
Shortly after the group takes cover, one of the guards gets on Mandalay Bay security radio and says, “We know where it’s at, the 32nd floor, room 135. Everyone else off the radio. I’m with Metro now.”
For another minute and a half, the group stands still.
“We’re taking gunfire,” an officer on the ground can be heard saying in the meantime over police radio. “It’s going right over our heads. We’re pinned down here with a bunch of civilians.”
Hendrex “once again hesitated” and “did not know what to do next,” according to his report.
As the final volley of gunfire goes off, Hendrex exclaims, “Oh, my God!”
“We can’t worry about victims,” a different officer can be heard broadcasting over police radio a few seconds later. “We need to stop the shooter before we have more victims. Does anyone have eyes on the shooter?”
Hendrex does not respond but begins walking down the hallway alone.
“Where are you going, sir?” his trainee asks.
Without an audible answer, she begins following Hendrex and the armed guards toward the stairwell.
I’m filled with mixed emotions after reading that and watching the video. To watch as they heard that even their fellow officers were getting shot, as they waited there paralyzed by fear, is a difficult thing. Part of me is empathetic, knowing that when the shit hits the fan some men find out they don’t have what it takes. And boy was this a shitty situation. Their actions could have resulted in their deaths and that’s tough for some men deal with.
But then the other part of me hates the fact that they couldn’t find it within themselves to rise above their own selfish fears and try to do something so save the lives of innocent people. That they just stood there while people were slaughtered for almost 5 minutes.
Having never been in any situation where my own life was put in danger, I can’t cast judgement in a way that would make me seem superior to these men. Because I don’t know what I would do.
But seeing this does make me appreciate so much more those police officers who do run into danger to save the lives of the innocent from evil men, the true heroes. Not just from that night, but from any and all situations where people’s lives are in real danger.