At least one off-duty police officer from California was shot and injured at the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Sunday evening (file photo).
(Update: An off-duty Manhattan Beach Police Department officer has been identified among the dead in Las Vegas, the Los Angeles Times reports. Rachael Parker, a police records technician, lost her life as a result of the attack.)
The officer was attending the Route 91 Harvest country music festival outside the Mandalay Bay hotel and resort, and was in the company of several other off-duty officers from the department. None of the other were apparently injured. However, Las Vegas Police Department Sheriff Joe Lombardo said that there were off-duty officers among the dead.
The Bakersfield Police Department issued a press statement:
The Bakersfield Police Department has been notified that several of our police officers were off-duty and attending the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival Sunday night when an active shooter event occurred.
Some of our officers witnessed the gunfire but were not in a position to return fire. One Bakersfield Police Department officer was struck by a bullet from the active shooter and is being treated at a Las Vegas hospital for non-life threatening injuries. The injured officer’s name will be released after the situation in Las Vegas has stabilized.
Chief Lyle Martin and the entire Bakersfield Police Department extend our thoughts and prayers to the victims of this brutal act, as well as the first responders of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department, Las Vegas Fire and Rescue, and Las Vegas emergency medical services.
As of 5:25 a.m. Monday morning, there were more than 50 dead and 200 injured, making the shooting among the deadliest in American history. It is comparable in scale to the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting in June 2016, though it happened much faster and involved automatic weapons.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Photo: file