and we're going to bring everyone up to speed. if you can just stay with us one second. here's what we are -- if you're joining us this hour we're on the air with some breaking news coming out of las vegas at this hour. here's what we know so far. around 10:30 p.m. local time in las vegas, active shooter situation was reported at a music festival, an outdoor music festival along the strip. the police department have confirmed that they do not believe there are any more shooters. what we have learned according to the las vegas police is that one suspect or at least one shooter is down and as of now, there are no more

24 more injured. as you can imagine, even though it is a sunday night in las vegas, it is still a very festive scene, a lot of concerts, a lot of venues, a lot of people on the strip. that is a very different scene at this hour according to our reporters on the ground. we have the story covered for you and we want to begin with nbc correspondent steve patterson who's been there throughout the course of this ordeal. steve, why don't you bring us up to speed first of all on what you've seen there over the last couple of hours since this incident began to unfold? where are you in relation to the reports of that active shooter at the music festival. >> this is the corner of tropicana and las vegas boulevard, as probably as central location as you can get. the mgm, the tropicana behind me. it was back over the tropicana,

where you see people combing the streets here. stretchers, ambulances, squad cars, back beyond that point is mandalay bay where that country music festival took place. we spoke to victims on the ground there who told us basically they were at that concert, there were performers on stage, they were enjoying themselves and they heard what sounded like bursts and bursts and burs, what they first believed, it's a festive scene, they thought it was fireworks so the performances continued until it was clear that those were gunshots. those people then stampeded away from that location on to the vegas strip where the reverie never really stops here so you have a mass of people already on the strip, a mass of people flooding from that location trying to get away from the scene and then police now pushing in. this scene has been relatively calm for about the better part of an hour now.

this. police have had a lock on it, they've pushed pedestrians out. we've seen police in full riot gear with long guns going from property to property to property, pushing people out with their hands up, just making sure at this location at least in this corner back until where that scene is is clear, making sure people are safe, making sure the operation has enough fluidity so they can get back there. you can see one lane of traffic remains open here. it sounds like reports that flights are now coming in and sort of some of the activity that you would see at this time very early on a monday morning is starting to resume. so it kind of corroborates with the reporting from police that they believe that the situation is safe, that they believe that whoever did the s&gu)jt is down and that they don't believe that there are other shooters at least in this location in this ar

they've cleared at least this scene although they continue to keep a lock on it, they continue to keep an eye on it and they continue to comb these multiple hotels and casino properties just to make sure this area is safe. >> all right. thank you. i'd like to bring in retired atf special agent in charge, jim, and i know you've been here for the better part of the last hour analyzing some of the scenes that we've been seeing, some of the sounds that we've been seeing from a lot of the user generated content or what news footage has been able to capture for us. i want to give us your perception of what's been going on here. >> from all the witnesses we've heard tonight directly watch and talk on camera to msnbc and nbc reporters there, to watching them tabo

to the video that's been posted by msnbc and on various other, you know, national media sites, you can actually hear the submachine gun fire. it's very clear it's absolutely submachine gun fire and there's people saying it maybe, could be, might be, no, it absolutely is submachine gun fire. in your recording around the world you've heard it clearly. there will be no doubt in your mind the trigger is held down and the rounds empty out. it sounded to me like there was four, it could be five but maybe three to five magazines, about 30 rounds each and there's a delay in between those magazines and that's when the people, you know, get up and try to run when they don't hear the shooting and it's likely the shooter is changing magazines. you know, joe fryer is

mandalay bay and he has one vantage point there but another vantage point may come when the daylight shows the front of the mandalay bay casino. if this shooter did not have access to a roof that means they're shooting from a window. the window would have to be cut open which it can be or broken in a small part and then a rifle, you know, stuck out the window. if what all the witnesses say holds true, multiple witnesses said it schemes like it was coming from the sky or an elevated position or on high and no one reported actually seeing a shooter. again, that goes back to, you know, maybe he was in an elevated position. we also know from vegas pd that the shooter is down in a room in the hotel, that again backs up possibly shooting from

so it's all just coming together in bits and pieces. it didn't sound from the quick review a couple of times i heard of a video that it was anything that one person could not have done. it could have just been one person. there was some semiautomatic fire after the fully automatic fire, but you know, that may have been the shooter with a handgun, another rifle, switched to semiautomatic mode on his rifle or it could even be a police officer returning fire or shooting up when he saw the flashes you know, at the window, so we're not quite clear on that, but shooting into a crowd that large with a submachine gun from an elevated position is going to cause this kind of number of casualties and of course, those high velocity rifle rounds are pretty devastating as you know. >> jim, let me ask you one question, if i may and again,

don't know anything about the shooter or motivations or identity. we are actually expecting a press conference from the las vegas police department that is going to begin any moment so i apologize in advance if i have to interrupt you to go to that press conference but obviously the first thing that jumps out in our mind given what we've seen overseas and the attack that took place in a music concert as well, is it too early, you any, to look and say that there may be similarities beyond the fact that this is what is sometimes referred to as a soft target, you would think that hotels like the -- to tells at the strip certainly would be pretty secure in not allowing somebody to enter their compound or their hotel on the premises with a weapon? >> right. well, the risk and the problem with hotels is you can just, you know, take a rifle, you can break it in half, you can put it in your luggage, you can even

carry long luggage that looks like a golf bag and you can get it in and just for the price of a room you can get in a hotel and get to an elevated position in most hotels in the world. the security is not made to stop that kind of attack. you're right. we don't know the motive but we have to look at the target as indicators of motivation. we do that in the police work, look at the target, who would want to kill people going to a concert. of course, what comes to mind quickly is manchester and we know that terrorists have attacked those venues. we also know, i mean, we can go back to the early al qaeda days in the early 90s, post the first world trade center bombing and on through and las vegas was always on the tip of their tongue. you can find many examples of terrorists in the middle east talking about

symbol of the decadent west and las vegas, metro police know this better than anybody, practice and drill for just such a problem. it's a target. it has been a spoken target by those terrorists, but yet we don't know -- we don't know that that's what this is. >> exactly. >> this is not someone who's trying to, you know, rob the bank. this is -- this is someone who is killing for power, maybe political theater, maybe hate, you know, these are the kind of motives that are possible. we don't know what the motive is, so -- but for someone to check into a hotel and bring rifles and ammunition, even one person -- >> a certain degree of premeditation involved in something like that. >> absolutely right. there's some planning, there's some, you know, logistics to it and likely they have him down. when they say the suspect is down, what they're saying is he's down,e

or deceased and they haven't totally secured the body yet, so if you have a situation like this with a mass attack then you also have to worry about a booby track suspect, a suicide belt, a bomb and so they have to carefully get the bomb squad, get some cameras in there and secure it and that takes time and also the vehicle as well, they had a suspicious suv there with a possible device or suspicious package. >> let me actually jump in here for a moment if i can. i'm going to ask you to stick with us. we'll come back to you momentarily. i want to jump back to stooefz patterson who is outside on the las vegas strip. you heard jim talking about the follow up in terms of the police trying to secure the area. potentially any other explosives that may have been planted. any over potential threat. what can you tell us in ter

active scene behind you in terms of what police are doing at this point? are you seeing anything from your vantage point? what are you seeing to substantiate that? >> reporter: we're not in an elevated position so our vantage point is what you see, what you get. so again, i want to stand back and show you. this scene has been clamped down mpl . it's looked like this. police have hatd a total lock. it's very different than what this point should be at any day. it's quite an eerie scene but police have basically locked this down. before what we saw more than an hour ago were teams of roaming police seemingly in squads and what they would do is they would comb basically in every direction from this staging area in multiple locations, combing through multiple properties, yo

know, wearing things like swat gear, helmets, using long guns, crouching down behind squad cars, pushing people out with their hands up from these properties. what you see now is some of that, but a lighter version. you know, not too long ago i would say while this clamped down scene has been the way it is now, we've still continued to see police with long guns combing the area. so i don't think they're going to take any chances despite reports that a shooter is down, despite reports saying that police believe that there are no more active shooters, that they have a lock on the scene here in las vegas. we continue to see squad cars and activity move in and out of this scene at least from where my vantage point is right now. >> all right. steve patterson is joining us now and -- >> good to talk to you this morning. just sort of looking atz the scene there as well, talk to us about any sort of foot trafc.

vegas at this time of night there are a lot of people walking back and forth. they obviously want to secure the perimeter as you were just talking about even when they say one shooter is down, likely no other shooters are out there, but are we seeing foot traffic resume? i'm seeing people walk behind you as i speak to you right now which is somewhat surprising considering the situation there. >> reporter: yeah, i mean, you can't push everybody out of a place like the vegas strip effectively pushing literally everybody off the street. what we have seen, again, are people moving in this location but police pushing them back as far as possible. >> we want to resume local coverage right now. let's take a listen. >> screaming, crying, fences were flipped, doored were opened. there was no vip section anymore t. we just ran in a building and just hid

>> so you're refreshed to see your father and happy to see your mother is inside her room safe as she's been texting me saying thank you so much. i know your father here is relieved because he had a cell phone that was dead and i know that many people out here are just wondering what is happening to, you know, their loved ones, because so many people got separated during this scene. so that's what's going on out here. south las vegas boulevard and like i said over on this side, more people getting transported down to the town center area. >> looks like rtc buses are being brought in to move people away from the strip. that's a good sign. it's also good to see the beginnings of some reunions there, some people embracing. we also want to let you know that -- >> we're hearing coverage from our local affiliate talking to someone who was obviously attending that concert who was happy to talko

and sound after going through such a tragic situation there. i want to go back to steve patterson who is on the strip for us. i want to resume our conversation there and just talking about how authorities there are securing the perimeter to make sure that people sort of aren't walking into the scene as they continue this investigation. >> reporter: just to let you know, we have multiple teams on the ground here. we have one team that is trying to come to our -- close to our location. they were told by police that's not going to happen. so what you see here is kind of what remains in place. police have a large lockdown on a wide swath of the vegas strip and it all stems at least from my vantage point from this location. again, we saw teams that were in place here more than an hour ago when this scene was incredibly active, when it was teeming with activity, when police were swarming in multiple different locations trying to push people out as far back as possible and to kp

safety reasons, but obviously to keep the operation flowing from not only where this is but back to where that country music festival was which was under the mandalay bay which is not too far back directly behind me. and so police again, continuing to do the work of making sure the area is safe. and obviously that's work that will continue throughout the night as they continue to basically keep a lock on this scene, to keep people out of this location and then to continue to do the operation that you see behind me. >> all right. steve, i want to cross over now to joe fryer. i know you've been reporting from your vantage point but i want to tell us if you've gotten the sense in the last couple of minutes the hotel that you're staying at, have they eased up the lockdown that was in place once this incident began now that the police department said they don't believe there are any more shooters? >> reporter: yeah, we simply don't know at this point. we have not receivedan

there hasn't been a lot of communication. there's not like a speaker that's been telling people what to do. initially when this started a couple hours ago one of my producers called down to see what was going on. they said the hotel is under lockdown. we are part of the mandalay complex looking down at the strip here but we haven't received any new information since then. we haven't been able to get anyone on the phone to tell us. we know that there is a police presence at this hotel right now and we don't want to be out there creating any sort of situation so we've been staying put here right now. we know that down below mandalay bay they've been trying to get people out of this area. they've continued to try to clear the strip area from people who are on the ground right now, people who are in their hotel rooms we have to assume many of them who are already in their hotel rooms when this started have been staying put but it's also possible many of them heard this and wanted to get out of the hotel facility. i want to show you our vantage nt

here because it gifzs yves you better look at what we've been seeing. what you're looking at right now, catty corner from here, it's dark right now but that is where this country music festival was taking place tonight. they were listening to music. there was singing going on witnesses say when suddenly they started to hear the shots of gun fire. many people have thought it was fireworks at first and realized it was gun fire. at this point we still don't know exactly where that gun fire was coming from, so that's information i waiting to hear from police, but that's the area where this was taking place. right now you take a look at it. the streets are only filled at this point with police and ambulances. the police presence not nearly as strong as it was say an hour and a half, two hours ago when police were rushing to this area responding to the situation, also ambulances rushing to this area to try and take care of those who were injured. we know

it's not just ambulances that are transporting the wounded but police officers according to witnesses but also take the wounded and get them to the hospitals along with everyday folks with cars who took them to the hospitals. the trauma center has been filled to capacity and other hospitals have been trying to pitch in to help. we see a little more darkness, buzz some more lights and that's the airport. it sits right next to mandalay bay, right next to the strip. we know that flights going in and out of that airport did come to a halt later tonight as this evening came to an end out of a concern for safety. >> all right. i want you to stand by. we have some video from a local broadcast we want to play for everybody. let's take a look. >> we actually moved down. police were pushing us down this way because they believe that the shooters have some type of possible situation going on where

around over and over and over in this area. we have not seen the helicopter recently but i can tell you when we came down the i-15 just a short time ago, police had russell road all blocked off there and then of course if you look down the street here, you can see police over here, we could see people hiding behind vehicles and there was a man who came out here and his shirt was bloody. he was saying that several of his friends had just gotten shot. you could tell that he was absolutely devastated just moving around. he actually pushed our camera man out of the way saying get out of here, get out of here. and at first he signalled us to ask us, come in, please help his friends and the people he had just witnessed getting shot while inside the harvest festival. we had talked to a couple other people who said they believe it was more than one shooter. of course we need to

that yet. we don't know how many active shooters were out there, but of course police are just trying to figure out how to make this scene safe. we have all kinds of people still walking up and down las vegas boulevard at this point, not under cover, i would say. so i believe that the police out here would probably be very concerned about other people's safety especially if they don't know what exactly is going on out here. of course we're trying to gather more information from people who were inside the festival, people who are walking around, but there were many people just trying to flee down south las vegas boulevard and other people just trying to get a handle on exactly what happened inside here tonight. they heard some type of automatic weapon and actually when we were getting pushed down here by police, police said please move out of our way, get down toward the four seasons drive area, because they believe there's an automatic weapon out here tonight. we will stay ou h

more information as the night goes on. >> all right. you were just listening to a report from our affiliate explain the scene there and referring to active shooters. it is now confirmed that one shooter is down. they believe that the scene is now secure. i want to bring jim back into the conversation. and when you were talking earlier, you had mentioned that you thought this shooting was possibly coming from a higher area and as we all know, anybody that's visited the las vegas strip there are a lot of areas that shooting could have come from considering the way in which the buildings are in las vegas and that strip is. is that something that you're pretty confident on because we are seeing more and more reports online referring to the fact that the shooting could have come from a higher area. >> when you have multiple witnesses it starts to get a little more -- a little stronger, if you will. it's not absolute at this time, but we have no reports on the ground of anybody actually

someone move through the crowd with a rifle and each witness that was on since this broke a few hours ago has been talking about the shots sounded like they were coming from on high, coming up from up in the air, coming from an elevated position. if you watch some of the video that's out there that's been posted, used by ms and on the l.a. times web and others, there's some actual, you know, eyewitness iphone video and you can hear the submachine gun fire clearly and it may be coming from an elevated position. we also had the fact that metro las vegas police have said they have one shooter down in a room, so -- and there's the submachine gun fire, you can clearly hear it. >> we want to play the video that we have that was captured by one of those witnesses. take a listen to it.

[ gun fire sounds ] >> and you were describing that as being submachine gun fire. correct? >> it sounds like it's a 30-round magazine. it sounds like he shoots it, he empties it, he changes it and that's sort of the silence in between when the people try to get away. he reloads another 30-round magazine and shoots again maybe looking for some targets and then he shoots again. it looks like he unloads a few, three or four, three to five, it's hard to tell. the video is not complete, but that goes on. there's a few single shots after ward which could be the same shooter with a handgun, another rifle or semiautomatic mode, but if he's in an

shooting down on a crowd, i mean, that's how you could, you know, kill people and wound 24 people. you're just shooting into a crowd from a, you know, a vantage point, so when the daylight comes, the reporters can look at that window. >> how much do you think should be read into whether or not the suspect, to use the words of the las vegas police department is down? does that mean he was neutralized, that he was shot, that he was apprehended? how would you read into that? >> down meaning not in custody, not with, you know, necessarily in handcuffs or taken to jail. down means just that. down could be dead or wounded in the location that tactical operators from swat have an eye on. they can see him, they know where he is, but they're not approaching and what they're -- when that report initially came in, so what that they would be doing they're going to send a robot in, they're going to

they're going to see if there's any other shooters in the room. so when they see someone down they can also see that through their long rifle scopes, they can see it down a hallway, they can see it with remote camera tools so it just means, you know, down and they have rifle cover on him so he's not going to get anybody else. now, that will change as they go through their procedures. >> jim, you know, the shooting happening %% at 10:30, then reporting that the suspect was down about three hours or so after the shooting, i may be a little bit off on the timing of that, but is it surprising that they were to apprehend or report the suspect being down that quickly? how difficult is it to locate the area in which that shooting was coming from? because when you're listening to the video there, you can see sort of how panicked and random it could seem to people that are on the ground. how difficult is it for investigators to pinpoint exactly the location

shooter? >> well, you know, if you're there early enough you can see the gun fire. you can see the flashes of the muzzle but the officers weren't there probably that early and they have to get up in a vantage point. long rifle snipers can get on their scopes from a distance on another elevated position behind a armored vehicle and look at the front of that casino, the mandalay bay and they could possibly see the man with the rifle in a room, in a broken window, you know, with a window cut and they could -- they could take him out with a long shot. that's a possibility. or they could enter, you know and move up as witnesses direct him. >> i'm sorry to interrupt you but we are now going to that press conference. let's take a listen. >>

>> so we're seeing the officials there and authorities there preparing for that press conference. this will be the first time we are hearing from officials there in las vegas on the incident that happened as we mentioned it began around 10:30 p.m. local time. as of within the last hour or so, the las vegas police department has confirmed that they do not believe there are any more shooters. the death toll that we have as of now is that two people were killed. nearly two dozen more injured. some oin critical condition. i'm sure authorities will briefing us up to date on all of those casualties, let's take a listen. >> well, good evening. obviously i'm sheriff from clark county and i'm here to talk to you about the tragic event that's taking place and it's currently taking place at the mandalay bay

vegas boulevard south. we experienced an active shooter situation, approximately 10:08 p.m. tonight, this evening. we had calls come in to dispatch of multiple shots being fired from the direction of the mandalay bay toward the route 91 concert that was taking place on the east side of las vegas boulevard. through investigation and response we determined there was a shooter on the 32nd floor of the mandalay bay. officers responded to that location and engaged the suspect at that location. he is dead currently. he has been identified. he is a local resident. i will not release his name at this time. but we are interested in a companion that is traveling with him and her name is and i will provide you the names so please be accurate on this is mary