Shootout with UNLV gunman heard in new Las Vegas police body camera video
LAS VEGAS (AP) — New police footage released Tuesday includes audio of the shootout that ended a gunman’s deadly rampage a month ago at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
The shootout near the main entrance to UNLV’s five-story business school isn’t shown in the body camera footage, but the video provides the first audio recording of the police gunfire that authorities say killed the 67-year-old shooter about 10 minutes after he first opened fired on the upper floors of the building.
Three professors were killed in the Dec. 6 shooting, and a fourth was critically wounded. Police said the shooter had a “ target list ” of faculty members, though none on the list were shot in the attack that unfolded around lunchtime as students and staff members were eating and playing games in a courtyard just outside the school.
In the video, an officer walks through the first floor of the business school while a security alarm blares. The officer begins to climb a set of stairs to a second-floor walkway when gunfire erupts in the distance. The number of shots fired are obscured by the alarm.
The officer, breathing heavily, then retreats down the stairs toward the direction of the gunfire at the building’s main entrance.
Outside, the officer finds marked patrol cars and more police officers.
“Hey! Is that the suspect?” the officers yells. Then a voice on the officer’s radio can be heard announcing that “we got one down in front” of the business school.
Authorities haven’t said how many rounds were fired when university police officers confronted the shooter outside the school. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said Tuesday in an email that its investigation was ongoing when asked by The Associated Press how many shots were fired in the shootout. A spokesperson for UNLV also declined to comment, citing the open Las Vegas police investigation.
The video was among three hours of footage made public Tuesday, the second batch of videos to be released by the police department. The agency is expected to release more footage.
Roughly five hours of video released last month provided the first look at the shooter inside the business school after he opened fire on the professors. One of the videos shows officers responding to the shooting unknowingly mistaking the shooter for a bystander and directing him out of the building during their frantic search for victims and threats.
Police have not specified a motive for the shooting but said the gunman was in financial trouble and had been turned down for teaching jobs at UNLV and other Nevada schools.