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Las Vegas Attack: A Timeline

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The numbers out of Las Vegas are staggering - 59 dead, more than 500 wounded. This is the nation's deadliest mass shooting in modern history.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DEAN HELLER: We'll never forget October 1, 2017. Think about that. October 1, 2017, will be a day to remember here in Las Vegas.

SIEGEL: That was Nevada Senator Dean Heller at a news conference today. Some of the sound you're about to hear in the next two minutes is disturbing.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

October 1, 2017, around 10 p.m. local time a single gunman opens fire on a country music festival in an open-air venue.

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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: One-six-nine SAM, we got shots fired 415 ASO, Route 91, sounded like an automatic firearm.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Copy code red at 169 SAM. They have shots...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Unintelligible). It's coming from upstairs in the Mandalay Bay - upstairs Mandalay Bay, halfway up. I see the shots coming from Mandalay Bay halfway up.

MCEVERS: The gunman shoots at a crowd of some 22,000 people from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino hotel, which is across the street from the venue.

SIEGEL: Gunshots interrupt the concert and continue after the music has stopped. Cell phones captured the sounds of gunshots and people running for their lives.

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SIEGEL: Twenty-one-year-old Mia Uribe (ph) was there.

MIA URIBE: I was in shock because I still thought that it was fireworks. And when I heard someone yell gun and everyone was running towards us, everyone was telling me to get down. There were people jumping over us. It sounded like pops over and over and over again. And it didn't stop. There was just a continuous flashing light.

MCEVERS: Miguel Martinez-Valle, a reporter at FOX5 Las Vegas, says people in the concert lot didn't know where to go.

MIGUEL MARTINEZ-VALLE: The fences came down. People actually trampled the fences trying to get out, to run away from the area. And people didn't know which direction to go.

MCEVERS: A SWAT team eventually located the gunman's hotel room.

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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: I have the hallway of the suspect's room on the 32nd floor.

MCEVERS: When officers entered the room, Paddock was dead.

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UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: We need the air clear for Zebra 20. They have one suspect down inside the room. Zebra 20 has one suspect down inside the room.

SIEGEL: Police say he committed suicide, and there are no answers yet to the question why he did what he did. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Kelly McEvers is a two-time Peabody Award-winning journalist and former host of NPR's flagship newsmagazine, All Things Considered. She spent much of her career as an international correspondent, reporting from Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. She is the creator and host of the acclaimed Embedded podcast, a documentary show that goes to hard places to make sense of the news. She began her career as a newspaper reporter in Chicago.
Prior to his retirement, Robert Siegel was the senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered. With 40 years of experience working in radio news, Siegel hosted the country's most-listened-to, afternoon-drive-time news radio program and reported on stories and happenings all over the globe, and reported from a variety of locations across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. He signed off in his final broadcast of All Things Considered on January 5, 2018.