Bodycam footage shows police may have passed UNLV shooter
Two Las Vegas police officers responding to the scene of the UNLV shooting directed a man who appeared to be Anthony Polito away from the scene, unaware that he was the gunman who had killed three professors, according to police body camera footage.
The footage released this week in three parts captured the officers running into Beam Hall after reports of an active shooter on UNLV’s campus on Dec. 6.
Alarms blared as the Metropolitan Police Department officers climbed a flight of stairs to a second-floor walkway inside the five-story building with their weapons drawn.
As they reached the landing, they noticed someone walking on a lower floor.
“Get out!” one officer yelled down.
Moments earlier, before the officers had entered the building, one of them acknowledged that a victim was being “driven out to Maryland Parkway. We need medical there.”
He approached someone outside who was not shown on video and asked: “Where is the shooter?”
“I don’t know that,” the person responded.
“Where was the person shot?” the officer asked.
“I don’t know that yet either,” the person said. “I just got here.”
“Is it this hall?” an officer asked before entering the business school.
The man inside wore a long black trench coat matching surveillance video played at police press conference where Sheriff Kevin McMahill identified 67-year-old Polito as the shooter.
A former business professor, Polito had been turned down for multiple jobs at Nevada universities. Police said Polito was armed with nearly 150 rounds of ammunition and a Taurus 9mm handgun.
He appeared to turn and glance up at the officers and continue walking slowly out of frame.
Polito killed UNLV professors Naoko Takemaru, Patricia Navarro Velez and Cha-Jan “Jerry” Chang and left another faculty member wounded.
Investigators found a target list in Polito’s Henderson apartment and determined that he mailed 22 letters from a Henderson post office prior to the shooting, addressed to university personnel across the country.
University police detective Nathaniel Drum and officer Damian Garcia shot and killed Polito after he exited the building.
The officers who encountered Polito moved up through the building floor by floor. Officers complained several times about the difficulty in communicating due to the alarm and called out on the radio if it could be turned off.
On the fifth floor, an officer attempted to kick in a locked door due to blood and bullet casings on the floor nearby.
After more than 30 minutes of trying to get into locked doors, officers exited the building to let SWAT and rescue teams enter the building.
“They’re mostly in the hallways on all the floors,” an officer said about the victims. “See a body, just grab it and pick it up.
Contact David Wilson at dwilson@reviewjournal.com.