Mandalay Bay just denied a claim that victims are using to blame the hotel for the Las Vegas shooting
"The 9:59 p.m. PDT time was derived from a Mandalay Bay report manually created after the fact without the benefit of information we now have," the company said in a statement on Thursday. "We are now confident that the time stated in this report is not accurate."
According to the statement, shots were fired "at the festival lot at the same time as, or within 40 seconds after, the time Jesus Campos first reported that shots were fired over the radio."
Stephen Paddock shot Campos, a security guard, through the door of his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay. Campos, who was hit in the leg, notified security. Police officers and hotel security officers immediately responded to Campos' report on the radio that shots had been fired, according to MGM.
People have been pressing police and the Mandalay Bay this week to explain an apparent six-minute gap in authorities' latest timeline of the Las Vegas shooting.
A US official told The Associated Press on Thursday that the hotel did not notify police of any gunshots until after Paddock had opened fire on the crowd. According to officers' timelines of the event, that would mean there were roughly six minutes between when the first shot was fired in the Mandalay Bay and when police were summoned.
A lawsuit filed Monday by Paige Gasper cited this apparent gap as evidence of the hotel's "negligence" in preventing the mass shooting that killed 59 people and wounded nearly 500. The complaint accuses the Mandalay Bay of failing to "timely respond or otherwise act" in response to Campos' shooting, something that MGM now refutes.
MGM's statement concludes: "We will continue to work with law enforcement as we have from the first moments of this tragedy as they work toward developing an accurate timeline."