LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Additional body camera videos from the shooting at UNLV were released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on Friday.
This video shows some previously unseen events unfolding on campus during the active shooter incident on Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023.
A gunman, since identified as 67-year-old Anthony Polito, opened fire in the building that houses the university's Lee Business School. Three faculty members were killed in the shooting and another was critically injured.
The video posted Friday runs just under 30 minutes long and is the seventh of eight body-worn camera videos Metro police have released showing officers' response to the shooting.
In at least one of the previously released videos, Polito can be seen leaving the business building as police arrive and begin ordering everyone out.
Polito was killed in a shootout with University Police Services officers just outside Frank and Estella Beam Hall, where he'd shot the four faculty members.
As officers are arriving, they hear a description of the gunman as radio traffic directs all responding officers to the third floor of Beam Hall.
The officers break into a sprint as a panicked voice comes over the radio advising them that an officer can hear shots being fired on the third floor.
As they turn the corner and Beam Hall comes into view, they pause as they learn that the suspect has been shot, then break into a run again toward the scene.
An officer is calling for backup and the officer whose camera feed we're seeing assures them "I've got a shotgun on him."
The next portion of the video is blacked out, so we're not able to see the scene unfolding outside Beam Hall, but we can hear what's going on.
"He's shot," one officer says to another who responds, "I don't know if there's another subject."
During officers' inital response, gunfire in different locations caused confusion over whether they were looking for one gunman or two — something that was well-documented in other body camera videos that have been released in the weeks since the shooting.
About a third of the way into the video, a group of officers that witnessed the gunman being shot then enters Beam Hall.
Officers begin sweeping classrooms on the second floor of the building. One splits off from the group to escort a student in a wheelchair safely to an elevator, pointing his shotgun around corners as they move through the building.
Eventually, struggling to find an elevator, he enlists other officers to carry the student downstairs and out of the building.
At this point in the video, we start to see students being escorted out. A line of students passes by the officer on their way down the stairs, panic and tears in some of their eyes.
Back upstairs, more lines of students are being led out of the building at a run as officers urge them on with shouts of, "Go, go, go!"
With the second floor cleared about two-thirds of the way into the footage, officers start asking "how do we get to the third floor from here?"
They quickly find a stairwell and start making their way up, still expressing their confusion over whether there is one shooter or two.
Another problem that came up in previous body camera footage occurs in this video, as well: Officers can't completely clear each floor because some doors are locked, and they don't have keys.
A portion of the floor in the third-floor hallway is obscured in the video by a black square. When officers get back downstairs they advise each other that, "victim's on three."
It's not clear where the officer ends up after this. The video ends with him stationed outside the stairwell at Beam Hall.
Previous videos reviewed by Channel 13 show that officers further upstairs in the building began breaking through drywall to get into locked classrooms and offices.
They would ultimately determine that Polito had been the only gunman, despite the initial confusion.
An investigation into the shooting would reveal that Polito had applied for at least four jobs at UNLV and been denied for all of them.
His personal website revealed some bizarre fixations, including an apparent obsession with Las Vegas and the Zodiac killer. (Polito claimed he had solved the killer's infamous cipher.)
In the days following the shooting, the three faculty members killed on Dec. 6 were identified as Patricia Navarro, Naoko Takamaru and Cha-Jan "Jerry" Chang.
Last week, university president Keith E. Whitfield announced plans for a permanent memorial in honor of the slain faculty members.
Beam Hall, where the shooting unfolded, is expected to remain closed through the duration of the spring semester.
