More bodycam video from UNLV shooting released
Las Vegas police released more body-worn camera footage Tuesday morning from last month’s shooting at UNLV.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department released three more videos showing bodycam footage from officers responding to the shooting. Two of the videos are just over 40 minutes long, and the third is just about one hour and 10 minutes long.
The first set of videos from the shooting that were released by Metro on Dec. 20 showed officers directing a man who appeared to be the gunman away from the scene as they entered Beam Hall, where the shooter had killed three professors.
Like the initial trio of videos from the shooting, the latest footage shows officers responding to calls about the shooting and running into the business school with weapons drawn before sweeping through the building.
The point-of-view officers in the two shorter videos both entered Beam Hall’s main entrance and walked up the main stairwell to begin sweeping through the building.
The call about the shootout with the gunman came over the radio right after officer in the longest video entered through the building’s west entrance. The officer wearing the camera that captured that video later said the shooter “must have passed us,” when talking to officers later in the footage. Some of the other officers said the shooter “had to have been behind us,” and thought that “he came out as officers were there.”
In each of the newly released footage, officers struggled with locked doors inside the building. One video showed police trying for over three minutes to kick into a locked classroom before giving up to continue sweeping the floor, then trying to kick in the same door for four more minutes until they kicked through drywall to get access to the room.
SWAT officers later used flashbangs to open locked doors, which startled officers in multiple videos.
The videos all heavily blur the footage whenever showing officers’ faces, at many points blurring the entire screen, but do not blur the footage showing faces from students and staff on campus.
All six of the videos showing bodycam footage of police responding to the UNLV shooting can be found on the Metro Public Records Unit’s YouTube channel.
Contact Mark Credico at mcredico@reviewjournal.com. Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com. Contact Peter S. Levitt at plevitt@reviewjournal.com.