It took police an hour and 12 minutes from the first 911 call to locate Paddock in the building. They were able to figure out that the shots were coming from the Mandalay Bay, so they worked their way from the bottom up. Once they reached the 32nd floor, authorities say they knew they were in the right place. Why remains unclear, but they could have possible smelt or heard gunfire.
To me, that is a very long time. The shooter had to have exhausted his ammunition supply since NO WHERE have I read or heard that the attack lasted 72 MINUTES.
Now, to me, that leaves a very long time for someone to have killed Paddock and left the scene. Just a possibility, but for there to have been SUCH A LONG TIME between when the attack ceased and when they found Paddock, that does not sit well for an open and shut case from my view.
Guest in next room reported that after 10 or 15 minutes, the shooting was over...long long time before PD arrives.
Look for muzzle flashes. Count floors.
Here is another take:
http://fortune.com/2017/10/02/las-vegas-shooting-police-found-shooter/
When a shooter began firing Sunday night at concertgoers at the Route 91 Festival, Las Vegas police could see the gunfire coming from the Mandalay Bay Hotel, but they weren’t sure of his exact location. Within 20 minutes, though, the gunman was dead. How did they manage to locate him so quickly?
It wasn’t a room by room search or even a notification from another guest. It was the smoke alarm in his hotel room.
Randy Sutton, a retired Las Vegas police lieutenant, tells the Washington Post that the small bits of smoke that emerge every time a round is fired, quickly reached a point that set off the in-room smoke detector.
Vegas casinos, especially ones as large as Mandalay Bay, which spans 135,000 feet and has 3,309 rooms, can quickly pinpoint where problems are occurring, which led police to the shooter’s 32nd floor room.
If you listen to LVPD dispatch radio. They had his room and location in 15 to 17 minutes. Then when they approached, shooter stopped shooting outside and defended his hotel inside exposure. Shot a security guard in hallway. It may have been close to an an hour until the swat took him down. But he had stopped shooting outside after 25 to 17 minutes.