The Mandalay Bay hotel security guard who seemingly disappeared in the aftermath of the Las Vegas mass shooting has resurfaced, appearing in a promo for tomorrow’s episode of The Ellen Show.
Jesus Campos, who plays a pivotal – if mercurial – role in the official timeline of the October 1 shooting, unexpectedly left a hotel room where he was preparing for a string of television interviews last week. A union leader, who was at the hotel with Campos at the time, says he hasn’t heard from the security guard since. Campos’ whereabouts remain a mystery.
Campos’ absence has been especially notable, as police have quite dramatically altered their official timeline of events.
It was originally stated Campos was the first person to encounter shooter Stephen Paddock‘s suite during the shooting and distracted him from firing upon festival attendees, however Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police later amended that claim by saying “Campos was encountered by the suspect prior to his shooting to the outside world.”
That changing timeline has asked questions of Mandalay Bay’s response to the shooting, and whether the hotel acted appropriately during the shooting. In any case, Campos’ forthcoming public testimony has been seen as vital in ironing out the exact sequence of events in a tragedy that left 58 people dead.
Amid that confusion, Mandalay Bay’s owners MGM Resorts yesterday issued a statement to the Los Angeles Times suggesting they were aware of Campos’ whereabouts, assuring the paper he “wants to tell his story at a time and place of his choosing.”
Now, it appears his place of choosing is not a news show on CNN, CBS, ABC nor NBC. Nope. Campos appears to have given his take on events to The Ellen Show.
Tomorrow, the first people to encounter the Las Vegas shooter are here – security guard Jesus Campos and building engineer Stephen Schuck. pic.twitter.com/dDmjzN6xBx
— Ellen DeGeneres (@EllenDeGeneres) October 18, 2017
The possibility exists that the interview was filmed before Campos vanished from the hotel room. If it wasn’t? Well, that just begs more questions about an increasingly confusing string of events.
We’ll keep you posted on this this one pans out.
