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<p>LAS VEGAS (AP) &#8212; A veteran police officer&#8217;s self-described freeze in a Las Vegas hotel hallway while a gunman fired on an outdoor concert crowd is prompting a review of whether lives could have been saved if officers had acted faster to stop the deadliest mass shooting in the nation&#8217;s modern history.</p><p>Three police tactics experts said they understood Officer Cordell Hendrex hesitating as he led a trainee and three Mandalay Bay hotel security guards toward the sound of rapid gunfire Oct. 1.</p><p>&#8220;We teach officers to respond directly to the active killing. Every second that it continues to go on, more lives are at risk,&#8221; said J. Pete Blair, a criminal justice professor and director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training center at Texas State University. &#8220;But we don&#8217;t expect them to take unnecessary risks.&#8221;</p><p>Carla Alston, spokeswoman for Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, issued a statement last week saying that every officer&#8217;s actions during the massacre was being evaluated by the department.</p><p>Hendrex acknowledged being &#8220;terrified with fear&#8221; in a written police report submitted Oct. 7 and made public May 23 by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department under court order.</p><p>&#8220;I froze right there in the middle of the hall for how long I can&#8217;t say,&#8221; he wrote.</p><p>The video and report represent separate parts of a massive puzzle being pieced together by authorities who say they&#8217;ve found no motive for the gunman&#8217;s rampage.</p><p>The footage was part of the eighth release by police of heartbreakingly graphic sights and sounds of the massacre and its aftermath. A ninth release is due Tuesday.</p><p>Hendrex, a nearly 10-year department veteran and field training officer, is first seen teaching rookie Officer Elif Varsin to write trespassing tickets for two women in a Mandalay Bay hotel security office.</p><p>Amid radio reports of ongoing shooting and &#8220;multiple casualties,&#8221; Hendrex, Varsin and three Mandalay Bay security officers run to an elevator talking about a shooter on the 32nd floor. They get off on the 31st floor. The reason has not been explained.</p><p>In the footage, Hendrex leads Varsin and the security guards, each with handguns drawn, out of the elevator and down a 31st floor hallway. They hear the first of at least five separate volleys of rapid gunfire during a three-minute span.</p><p>&#8220;Holy s&#8212;-. That&#8217;s rapid fire,&#8221; Hendrex says. The group stops.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m inside the Mandalay Bay on the 31st floor, we can hear it above us,&#8221; Hendrex says over his police radio.</p><p>&#8220;Just be advised it is automatic fire, fully automatic fire from an elevated position,&#8221; a radio voice says. &#8220;Take cover.&#8221;</p><p>Varsin&#8217;s video shows the group in the 31st floor hallway for about five minutes before Hendrex leads them halfway up a stairwell to the 32nd floor. They remain there for at least 15 minutes, when the video clip ends.</p><p>Authorities have said the gunman, Stephen Paddock, fired barrages for about 10 minutes from 32nd floor windows into the open-air Route 91 Harvest Festival concert across Las Vegas Boulevard before killing himself. More than 400 people were wounded and hundreds more were injured as they fled, officials said. Fifty-eight people were killed.</p><p>&#8220;I remember thinking that I had myself, my day 2 trainee and three security managers,&#8221; Hendrex later wrote. &#8220;Between the 5 of us only I and Officer Varsin were wearing body armor and all of us were armed with a handgun each.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;The shooting stopped and all I could think was to stop the shooter or shooters from &#8230; escaping,&#8221; he said.</p><p>It is not clear if Hendrex reached the 32nd floor stairwell door near the shooter&#8217;s room that had been sealed shut. On the 32nd floor, a hotel security guard had been wounded in the leg by gunshots fired through the door into the hallway where he had discovered the obstruction.</p><p>Body-camera video released May 2 shows teams of officers sometime later moving carefully from different locations, checking rooms on floors 29, 30 and 31 before blasting through the door to Paddock&#8217;s suite. That was about 80 minutes after Paddock started shooting, and more than an hour after gunfire ended.</p><p>Inside, police found Paddock dead, windows broken and 23 rifles strewn about. Fourteen of the rifles were fitted with &#8220;bump stock&#8221; devices to allow rapid-fire shooting similar to that of automatic weapons.</p><p>Questions were raised amid changing timelines from Las Vegas police and the FBI in the days after the shooting about why police didn&#8217;t get to Paddock sooner.</p><p>Lombardo said at that time he was &#8220;absolutely offended&#8221; by suggestions that police bungled the response.</p><p>Lombardo, who has since been re-elected head of the police department, ordered officers and employees not to comment about what he calls an ongoing investigation. The FBI in Las Vegas has repeatedly declined to comment.</p><p>The sheriff has said he expects a final report to be issued by August.</p><p>Hendrex and Varsin did not respond to email messages from The Associated Press, and Steve Grammas, head of the police union, declined to comment.</p><p>Eugene O&#8217;Donnell, a former New York police officer who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, called for &#8220;an honest conversation about the need for police to transform on a dime from peacekeepers to military commandos.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;We have to be realistic,&#8221; O&#8217;Donnell said. &#8220;Police officers are civilians with guns. The notion that they can spring into action and take on a mass murderer who is running up the body count is probably something you can&#8217;t ask.&#8221;</p><p>Thor Eells, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, viewed the body-camera video at the request of AP.</p><p>He said no amount of tactical training and crisis conditioning, short of actual combat experience, can overcome a natural reaction to pause in the face of danger.</p><p>&#8220;This is not a training issue,&#8221; Eells said. &#8220;You can simulate an active shooter scenario, but it&#8217;s not the same as when real bullets are flying.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2017, file photo, police run toward the scene of a shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas. A veteran police officer's self-described freeze in a Las Vegas hotel hallway while a gunman fired on an outdoor concert crowd is prompting a review of whether lives could have been saved if officers had acted faster to stop the mass shooting. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/web1_120775853-e28ceaf253344d4cbf736d5f6514d937.jpg</photo0><caption0>FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2017, file photo, police run toward the scene of a shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas. A veteran police officer's self-described freeze in a Las Vegas hotel hallway while a gunman fired on an outdoor concert crowd is prompting a review of whether lives could have been saved if officers had acted faster to stop the mass shooting. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)</caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/web1_120775853-4ae03830c35d4c24b48ad8a9d95e3629.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2017, file photo, police officers advise people to take cover near the scene of a shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas. A veteran police officer's self-described freeze in a Las Vegas hotel hallway while a gunman fired on an outdoor concert crowd is prompting a review of whether lives could have been saved if officers had acted faster to stop the mass shooting. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/web1_120775853-4ae03830c35d4c24b48ad8a9d95e3629.jpg</photo1><caption1>FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2017, file photo, police officers advise people to take cover near the scene of a shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas. A veteran police officer's self-described freeze in a Las Vegas hotel hallway while a gunman fired on an outdoor concert crowd is prompting a review of whether lives could have been saved if officers had acted faster to stop the mass shooting. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)</caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div></div>

Officer’s hesitation during Vegas shooting prompts review