‘I WAS JUST GOING TO BED WHEN THE SHOOTING STARTED’

Floyd Conrade, 50, a storage administrator for information technology from Emporia, Kan., checked into the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on the night of Oct. 1. He was in town for a four-day conference, and assigned to Room 31-134.

He, of course, had no idea what was being planned directly over his head. Hours later, a man on the floor above — in the conjoined rooms of 32-134 (a standard room) and 32-135 (a 1,705-square-foot suite) opened fire on a crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival across Las Vegas Boulevard South. In each room, the man, Stephen Paddock, broke a floorto-ceiling window to commit the massacre.

Physically, Conrade was as close to the gunman as anyone.

Where were you when the shooting began?

I was just kicking back for the night, getting ready for bed. I heard the first volley go off. Like everyone else says, it sounded like fireworks. I went over to the window and looked out over at the concert venue, and I didn’t see any fireworks. It was about the third volley that it kicked in that it was something more than fireworks.

Could you tell it was right above you?

About the third time, it was really loud, right above me. My assumption is that was when he went over to the other window. That’s when I started hearing the actual echoes. Echoed from the reports off the outside of the building, I guess. It was much louder, much more intense. I could actually hear debris hit my window.

You think it was glass? Shells?

I couldn’t tell. I looked on the sill after the fact, but I couldn’t see anything. I could actually see the shadow of the curtain flapping in the breeze above me on Monday.

What did you do once you realized it was a shooter just above you?

At that point, I stayed away from the window, in case anybody decided to return fire. It was like, let’s put something between me and the window. Once everything quieted down, I went and looked back out the window a little.

Could you see people running? Falling? Screaming?

I wasn’t sure what the actual target was. I didn’t know if he was shooting