Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos and engineer Stephen Schuck spoke to ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ in an interview that aired Wednesday.
(Michael Rozman/Warner Bros./Handout via REUTERS)
The Mandalay Bay security guard who briefly disappeared from the public eye broke his silence on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” Wednesday, describing how he was wounded by the perpetrator of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Jesus Campos told DeGeneres in a pre-recorded interview that he had been called to the 32nd floor of the hotel on the night of Oct. 1 to investigate an open door alarm. He said he tried to access the floor from a stairwell next to gunman Stephen Paddock’s hotel room, but was blocked by a bolted emergency exit door.
“There was a metal bracket holding the door in place,” said Campos, who described it as “just out of the ordinary. It’s not normal.”
Campos, who was shot in the leg by Stephen Paddock, told DeGeneres that he was ‘doing better every day, slowly but surely.’
(Michael Rozman/Warner Bros./Handout via REUTERS )
Campos said he reached the floor through another stairwell and inspected the metal bracket from the other side. As he walked back into the hallway from a room that leads to the stairwell, the door made a loud noise as it closed behind him.
“I believed that’s what caught the shooter’s attention,” Campos said. “As I was walking down, I heard rapid fire. At first I took cover. I felt a burning sensation. I went to go lift my pant leg up and I saw the blood.”
“I felt a burning sensation. I went to go lift my pant leg up and I saw the blood.”
Mandalay Bay engineer Stephen Schuck, who went to the 32nd floor to look at the door Campos had called about, told DeGeneres that he initially thought he was hearing jackhammers when the gunfire began.
“As an engineer, I thought, ‘we are not working up here late at night. We wouldn’t be doing that,'” said Schuck, who added that the wounded Campos yelled at him to take cover as bullets whizzed past his head.
“I could feel the pressure,” the engineer said.
Campos added that a woman poked her head out of her room to see what was going on, but he told her to go back inside.
Campos had canceled several scheduled TV interviews last week and his appearance Wednesday did nothing to quell rampant speculation and rumors surrounding the horrific attack.
DeGeneres praised Campos for saving the life of Schuck and the unidentified woman, and noted that her interview would be the only time the guard would discuss the shooting publicly.
Nearly three weeks since Paddock killed 58 people and wounded more than 500 others, the FBI and Las Vegas Police have yet to reveal a motive for the shooting and questions remain about the timeline of events — which have become muddled after police and the owners of Mandalay Bay gave conflicting statements.
Police have said they’re not planning on holding any other news conferences, absent new evidence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
