The Las Vegas coroner’s office, which identified and examined the bodies of the 58 victims and the suspect from the Harvest 91 Festival massacre has been on lockdown since the morning after the shootings.
The office was still locked down on Friday, Oct. 18, according to footage recorded by independent journalist Mike Tokes.
Tokes knocked on the front door of the Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner and a female employee opened the door.
“Our office is still closed,” the woman said. “We’re still on lockdown just because of the shootings.”
Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner. (Google Maps)
When Tokes inquired if this is a regular procedure, the employee answered, “We’ve never had anything like this before.”
The woman also said that she was not free to speak to journalists.
A relative of a victim who went to the office on the morning after the shooting was turned away, Newsweek reported. Officials were instead handling victim identification, paperwork, and transportation arrangements around the clock at a separate location staged at a convention center.
The coroner’s office had a police detail staged near the rear entry, Tokes’s video shows.
The Las Vegas coroner’s office confirmed the identities of the 58 victims of the shooting massacre as well as the suspect, Stephen Paddock. The office is also tasked with reporting the position the body was found in, retrieving bullets for police investigators, and determining the path bullets or shrapnel traveled.
The Las Vegas coroner’s office handles cases throughout the Las Vegas valley and employs dozens of investigators in addition to administrative staff.
In this Monday, Oct. 2, 2017, file photo, drapes billow out of broken windows at the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip, following a deadly shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
The coroner’s office operates independently of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. In September, a court ruled that autopsy records cannot be kept secret, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
The coroner’s office was inundated after the shooting, CNN reported. Coroners from other areas traveled there to assist.
The head coroner, John Fudenberg, was promoted to his position in 2015, News 3 Las Vegas reported.
The coroner’s office had transported all the bodies from the scene of the shooting by Monday, Oct. 2. It released the full list of the 58 victims and the suspect to the public once all of the bodies were identified.
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