Security Guard Reveals How Vegas Shooter Discovered Him

Jesus Campos says door closed loudly, then came 'rapid fire'
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 18, 2017 6:03 AM CDT
Updated Oct 18, 2017 6:21 AM CDT
Vegas Security Guard: Door Closed Loudly, Then Came 'Rapid Fire'
From left, Stephen Schuck, Jesus Campos, and Ellen DeGeneres.   (Twitter)

It was the sound of a door closing loudly behind Jesus Campos that likely alerted Stephen Paddock to the security guard’s presence on Mandalay Bay’s 32nd floor minutes before he opened fire on a Las Vegas concert crowd below. Days after canceling a series of media appearances, Campos appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show alongside Mandalay Bay engineer Stephen Schuck and, in an interview airing Wednesday, offers his version of events from Oct. 1, per the Los Angeles Times. Alerted that a door was ajar on the 32nd floor, Campos says he climbed up from the 31st floor but found a stairwell door blocked. Using another route, he reached the other side of the door, inside a small room, and found a “metal bracket” keeping it closed. He says he called for an engineer, then exited the room with the door banging behind him.

"I believe that's what caught the shooter's attention," says Campos. As he walked away from Paddock's room next to the stairwell, "I heard rapid fire" and "took cover," he says. Campos realized he'd been shot but only radioed that shots had been fired. "I was going to say that I was hit, but I got on … my cellphone just to clear radio traffic," he says. As Schuck arrived on the 32nd floor, Campos warned him to take cover, too. "Within milliseconds, if he didn't say that, I would have got hit," Schuck says, noting he could feel "pressure" from bullets "passing behind my head," per the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Campos says he also warned a guest to take cover. The security guard adds he's "doing better each day." DeGeneres says Campos will offer no other comment on the shooting. (More Las Vegas shooting stories.)

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