bodies in the street. he was shooting from up above and i heard there was four shooters but there was dead bodies on the street. there was dead bodies in the place. there was dead bodies everywhere. nbc s steve patterson is live in las vegas where he has been on the strip for most of the night. steve, walk us through where you are. reporter: we are at the corner of tropicana and las vegas boulevard. you can t really get anymore central to the las vegas sfrtri. yet throughout the night there is an eerie quiet. it s gone from something troubling to something somber. this is where police staged bringing in ambulances, fire crews, first responders, police staging here. when we first arrived here this piece was teaming. police had s.w.a.t. gear on, long rifles, they were going into various hotels. and as the night went on, we
initial shots kind of ringing out. we luckily got out of there quick. we were in a place to get out quickly, thank god. because there s a lot of people on the other side closer to the restaurant. how longs did it take you to get to safety? well, it felt like forever. i imagine it was 30 to 45 minutes before we felt like we were completely safe. we actually worked back towards the strip unknowingly not realizing that the shooter was just a couple of feet out. we were by x caliber and gm are there. we jumped in a cab. we asked the cab to take a u-turn heading south away from the strip just to get out of dodge. it was absolute chaos. you said that things went quiet. that s when you ran for cover, when it sounded like the shooter
shoulder. police locked this strip down. it was very eerie to hear the las vegas strip at 11:30 with no people talking. the only lights you saw beneath the neon were red and blue. so as the night went on, police in s.w.a.t. gear, full s.w.a.t. gear with long guns went to casino, hotel, casino, who tell to make sure that the safety concerns were addressed. what they did is they evacuated those places. all the patrons came up with their hands out. then we started to hear from the victims. it was determined that wasn t the place. we started seeing people filter out, some very disheveled, some very shocked. others have seen the horrific nature of what we ve been describing all morning long. i talked to one woman who said there were piles of body near her, she had to use them on top of her to play dead. another woman hid with her significant others in the bushes
i want to go back to joe fryer. there you are in the four seasons, which is part of the mandalay bay complex. you re just a few floors above where the shooting took place. yeah, that s right. so the four seasons basically has a few floors sort of on the upper levels of mandalay bay. below us is part of mandalay bay and over there is another wing of mandalay bay. it is our understanding that the shooter was six floors behind us. we don t know how directly behind us but in this vicinity. the sun is coming out. we don t want to go in too tightly. we know that over here the country music festival. there was 22,000 people inside
mandalay bay tower. for those of you asking over and over on twitter why we are not showing a picture of stephen paddock, there s no conspiracy here. we do not yet have a confirmed photo. i assume when we do we will share it. i m talking about the shooter that took place last night, the deadliest shooting in u.s. history. steven paddock who was found in his hotel room dead. 50 people confirmed dead. 400 taken to area hospitals after last night s deadly shooting at a concert where 22,000 people were standing in front of that stage. joining me now former fbi profiler, cliff van zandt. jim cavanaugh, both msnbc analysts. clint, how do you begin to figure out what happened here and what motivated this man? motivation is one of the things. of course, all of the investigators we try to find out and realize the new fbi director recently said that the fbi has