(Ken Silva, Headline USA) For years after the Oct. 1, 2017, Las Vegas mass shooting, officials said that body cam footage of the first officer to enter gunman Stephen Paddock’s hotel room didn’t exist. But earlier this month, such footage was published by the YouTube channel Las Vegas Shooting Archive, which explained on its page how it found the video.
The new footage is from Las Vegas Metro Police officer Levi Hancock, who located Paddock on the floor with an apparent head wound. Hancock’s newly released footage shows him reading a casino player’s card for Paddock’s longtime girlfriend, Marilou Danley.
According to the YouTube channel Las Vegas Shooting Archive, the Hancock body cam was thought to not have existed until police provided it to Paramount+ for its 2022 documentary, titled 11Minutes. And it wasn’t for another roughly three years that an investigator noticed the footage on the Paramount+ doc.
🚨Nearly 8 years after the fact, Las Vegas police have released body cam footage of the first officer to enter alleged mass shooter Stephen Paddock's hotel room following his Oct. 1 spree.
The footage was first posted earlier this month by the YouTube channel Las Vegas Shooting… pic.twitter.com/WBjJM0tfaS— Headline USA (@HeadlineUSA) June 27, 2025
Researchers then requested the footage through a formal records request, finally obtaining it earlier this year after a lengthy legal battle.
“Why the LVMPD withheld the footage back then, lied to the public and ignored a court order to release it, is anyone’s guess,” Las Vegas Shooting Archive said on its page.
Ultimately, the footage doesn’t provide any additional clarity to what happened on Oct. 1, 2017. The Las Vegas shooting killed 60 people and injured 850 others in what remains the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Neither the FBI nor local police have even determined a motive for Paddock’s actions.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, there were reports that gunman Stephen Paddock had told people around him he was a “government experiment,” and would often lie in bed “moaning and screaming” in mental anguish.
There were also media reports from 2017 about Paddock being prescribed Diazepam, a sedative-hypnotic drug. Additionally, Paddock reportedly told an acquaintance, Jim Nixon, that he had been having deranged dreams telling him to go on a killing spree.
“My friend it sounds like you are going to kill or murder someone or some people. Please whatever it is I would like to talk to you about it and we can discuss it,” Nixon reportedly told Paddock on June 1, 2017. “Please don’t go on any shooting rampage like some fool.”
And in March 2023, Headline USA broke a story about the FBI investigating rumors that Paddock had been a psych patient at Mesa View Hospital in Mesquite, Nevada.
However, little attention has been paid to Paddock’s mental health woes.
In the wake of the FBI releasing documents in 2023, most media outlets have concentrated on records about a possible motive for his killing spree: some $38,000 in gambling losses—a dubious reason, considering that Paddock was reportedly a multimillionaire.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
