At one point, Jesus Campos seemed to be the biggest heroic figure in the Las Vegas mass shooting tragedy. According to the original timeline, Campos disrupted Stephen Paddock’s plan for the massacre, forcing him into committing suicide when a wounded Campos alerted police to Paddock’s location. However, a series of timeline shifts has put that narrative into question, and raised other questions about what Campos did and when.
Unfortunately, Campos is no longer around to answer those questions — and no one seems to know where he went, the LA Times reports:
Now, the man that many want to honor and who can help bring clarity about the timeline of the shooting has vanished from the public eye, less than two weeks since the Oct. 1 massacre, which left 58 people dead and more than 500 others injured.
David Hickey, president of the Security, Police, and Fire Professionals of America union, said it had been four days since he last saw Jesus Campos.
“We have had no contact with him…. Clearly, somebody knows where he is,” he said.
Fox News reported yesterday that Campos disappeared after being seen at a walk-in health clinic, although the clinic says it has no record of it:
David Hickey of the Security, Police, and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) told reporters Friday that he got a text the night before saying Jesus Campos was taken to a UMC Quick Care facility, though he did not specify where or whom the text came from.
A spokesperson at the UMC Quick Care, which has eight locations throughout the Las Vegas area, told Fox News on Monday that they had “heard nothing” about Campos visiting them. …
“Right now I’m just concerned where my member is, and what his condition is. It’s highly unusual,” Hickey said Friday. “I’m hoping everything is OK with him and I’m sure MGM or the union will let (media) know when we hear something,” he said.
It’s curious indeed. Campos had a raft of interviews scheduled with national media outlets last week, but abruptly canceled them when the hotel and local police began to make changes to the timeline. None of that implicates Campos in any wrongdoing, but it did raise questions as to why it took so long for the hotel and police to respond.
The LAT report also called into question why Campos was at Paddock’s door in the first place. A former guard at Mandalay Bay tells the Times that they didn’t have open-door alarms at the hotel, the alleged catalyst for Campos’ response:
According to a former armed security guard at Mandalay Bay, there are supposed to be armed guards patrolling the hallways of the hotel and that Campos was using a device to log in his whereabouts in the casino.
The former security guard, who worked there in the early 2000s, questioned Lombardo’s statement that Campos was investigating the open door alarm.
“There was no alarm system for opened doors when I was there,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss security issues. “You know how often people would have to call hotel guests if that was the case?”
In door-access systems sold by companies for which I worked, you could set an alarm for a door held open status that exceeded a set amount of time. However, at least for hotel rooms, even that would be problematic, as housekeeping almost always keeps the door blocked open during their work in guest rooms. I had assumed the reference to an opened door was for a fire exit, and that still might be the case. Campos had told police that he radioed back to his dispatcher, and that Paddock opened fire, so the open door in question would not necessarily have been Paddock’s.
There is no reason to think that Campos had any responsibility for Paddock’s massacre. In fact, the signs still mainly point to Campos being a key reason why Paddock didn’t continue to fire longer than he did. But his disappearance certainly seems curious, if not suspicious, and Vegas investigators have to be wondering whether Campos has told them the entire story.
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