After releasing a preview the day before, CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday night showed the full interview with law enforcement officers who stormed the Las Vegas hotel room where gunman Stephen Paddock launched his brutal assault.
>> Watch the full interview here
"60 Minutes" opened the segment "Storming Room 135" with Detectives Casey Clarkson and Matthew Donaldson, Officers Joshua Bitsko and Dave Newton and SWAT team member Levi Hancock describing the "neatly stacked" guns and magazines in the hotel room at the Mandalay Bay that Paddock used to kill 58 people and wound hundreds more.
The officers said there were so many long guns in the room that they were tripping over them. Each of them heard over the police radio that there was an active shooter and responded to the scene without hesitation. Conflicting reports over the radio of whether the shooter was on the 29th floor or 32nd floor made the officers think there may have been two shooters.
They soon learned that wasn’t the case.
The officers formed an ad hoc SWAT unit, carefully planning the breach of Paddock’s room.
A food tray on a room service cart just outside the door thought to be a booby trap actually turned out to be cameras Paddock set up to warn himself of law enforcement activity.
After officers breached the room, they said it looked “almost like a gun store," adding that they saw a bloody revolver on the floor that Paddock used to take his own life.
Between laptops, phones, drills, drill bits, tools, electrical wiring and a note with numbers signifying altitude, distance from the crowd and bullet drop, the room painted one clear picture, the officers said: Paddock had planned this for some time.
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Contrary to reports that Paddock may have planned to escape, the officers said it appeared he may have planned to have a shootout with police.
“The sheriff was saying the other day that it almost appeared as though he thought he would be able to get out of this, that he had an escape plan. Did you see any evidence of that?” CBS’s Bill Whitaker asked.
“From what I saw ... his plan might have been to shoot it out with us,” Newton replied. “Because there was a rifle on a bipod near the door and just the amount of ammunition and weapons he had. He could of held us off for hours.”
You can read the full transcript of the interview here.
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