Las Vegas Shooting: Illinois Man Recounts Terror At Mandalay Bay

LAS VEGAS, NV — When Wilmette resident Paul Traynor checked into the Mandalay Bay hotel Sunday night, he was first assigned a room on the fourth floor, overlooking the Strip and the site of what would soon become the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

But, wanting to avoid the thumping bass and loud music coming from the ground, Traynor asked the hotel's reception for a different room and was accommodated on the 13th floor. His request spared him from witnessing the carnage that would unfold over the coming hours.

"I can't imagine what that carnage was like outside," Traynor told Patch. "I just thank God I wasn't looking out that window that I would have been in."

Also See: The Victims Of The Las Vegas Shooting

Traynor, who was in Las Vegas doing presentations at a tech conference, remembers having dinner around 8 p.m. at the House of Blues and noticing quite a few diners in country and western attire but not paying too much attention to it. He headed back up to his room around 9 p.m. to catch up on some work.

While he was working, he heard a series of long, sustained rumbles, several minutes apart. At the time, he thought it must have been the sound of aircraft taking off and landing from nearby McCarran International Airport.

"The rapid fire of it – It sounded like an engine going by. It sounded like it was that long, it kind of ramped up. It went away, then it came back again," Traynor said. "It didn't occur to me it could be anything else."

It didn't occur to him that what he had heard was automatic gunfire. Even after hearing that there had been a shooting, Traynor said he didn't make the connection with the sound.

"I just couldn't process it," he said. "You just don't think that's what it's going to be, that someone is firing hundreds of shots and mowing down people on the other side of the hotel."

About two and a half hours later, Traynor received a group email from his clients alerting him of an active shooter and advising him to stay sheltered in place. Soon after, he began to notice the constant blare of sirens outside, so he checked TV news before going to bed. He learned that at least two people had been killed and dozens wounded. He contacted his family to let them know he was safe and went to bed.

Around 2 a.m., Traynor was awoken by loud banging on his hotel room door. The door opened, a flashlight beam was trained on him and a squad of heavily armed SWAT team members confirmed he was OK and alone in the room.

"Please stay in the room and go back to sleep," he was told, before the door closed and the SWAT team repeated the same protocol on the next door down. Traynor went back to sleep and the hotel stayed on lockdown.

Guests at the Mandalay Bay were allowed to leave their rooms shortly after 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Traynor said. He went down to the casino floor soon after. On his way downstairs he noticed a message from the SWAT team noting that his floor had been cleared and secured.

Traynor described the casino as empty and almost completely silent Monday morning. He noticed dozens of exhausted-looking people in country-western clothes, some covered in dirt, passing by as he walked along the corridor that collects the Mandalay Bay and Luxor hotels. He understood many were hotel guests who had only just been allowed to return after being locked out overnight.

"It was just surreal and terribly sad," he said. "The people that weren't very upset just looked shocked. A lot of people were just wandering around not saying anything. The people that did talk to each other were just quiet. People were on the phone calling loved ones."

RAW: Video Of First Moment Of Las Vegas Shooting

In the elevator Monday morning, Traynor said he encountered one man who had spent the night at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas' Thomas & Mack Center arena. The man told him he had not slept at all. Another man in the elevator, standing on crutches with a bandaged foot, told Traynor he had been at the show. He also had not slept, he said.

"I don't think I'll ever sleep again," the man told Traynor, with tears in his eyes.

See Also:

• Las Vegas Mass Shooting: At Least 58 Dead, 515 Injured In Worst Shooting In U.S. History, Says Sheriff
• Stephen Paddock, Las Vegas Mass Shooting Suspect: Facts To Know
• Las Vegas Shooting: Raw Videos Capture Moments As Carnage Unfolded
• Las Vegas Mass Shooting Worst In U.S. History: Timeline

Photo: Drapes billow out of broken windows at the Mandalay Bay resort and casino Monday, Oct. 2, 2017, on the Las Vegas Strip following a deadly shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas. A gunman was found dead inside a hotel room. Photo by John Locher/Associated Press