Mandalay Bay guest: Las Vegas shooting 'blew my mind'

A Cocoa Beach businesswoman, staying at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, said law enforcement officers woke her up early Sunday to check her room following the mass shooting outside her hotel.

Shambie Cooper, an Internet technology expert, is in Las Vegas for a data storage conference. As of Monday morning, she told FLORIDA TODAY she believed the hotel was on lockdown.

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"I was in bed asleep and had no idea what was taking place," Cooper said. "I didn't find out anything until 2:30 a.m. Monday when a friend messaged me to ask if I was OK. I looked online and saw what was happening.

"It blew my mind," she said.

About 90 minutes later, she heard a hallway commotion outside her room and five heavily-armed law enforcement personnel spent about a minute searching her room as part of a room-by-room search.

"They just said, 'Ma'am, we need to search your room,'" Cooper said. "I knew why they were there, and I wasn't going to hold them up. At that time they were still looking for a second person, and I didn't want to keep them from doing what they had to do."

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Cooper, who is on the resort's 17th floor, said she didn't hear any gun shots when the shooting happened. Cooper believed she was staying in the same wing — it's a three-wing resort — as shooter Stephen Paddock.

The deadly shooting in Las Vegas left more than 50 people dead and over 500 injured. Social media posts from another Brevard County native — now living in California — reported that at least one victim was from the Space Coast. 

“My son was shot there in the Leg last night he is fine. Not sure I am,” Vicky Jesse wrote as a comment to a Facebook post about the shooting.

Jesse’s son, Eddie now lives in California, according to his Facebook page. His parents still live in Brevard. Jesse’s father, Rik Jesse, was a longtime photographer at Florida Today. His grandfather, James Jesse, was publisher of Florida Today’s predecessor, Today newspaper,  in the 1970s.

Authorities shut down part of the Las Vegas Strip and Interstate 15 after receiving reports of an active shooter at the Route 91 Harvest festival, near the Mandalay Bay casino at about 10:10 p.m. local time. Nevada is on Pacific time; three hours earlier than Florida.

Sheriff Joe Lombardo of the Las Vegas Police Department confirmed at a news conference that the shooter, identified as Stephen Paddock, had fired from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay resort. He said officers responded and the suspect was dead.

When Cooper spoke with FLORIDA TODAY late Monday morning, she said the resort was eerily quiet, and she still hadn't heard from the hotel on any status updates.

"I don't see anyone outside. I don't hear sound out in the hall. It feels like I'm the only one in this place," she said.

The brush with disaster has left her unnerved.

"I don't like it. I don't like it all," said Cooper. "I want to go home."

USA TODAY contributed to this report.

Contact Price at 321-242-3658

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