‘It sounds like a BB gun’: what a B.C. man saw and heard when shots rang out in Las Vegas

WARNING: Disturbing content. Reader discretion is advised.

First, there were tens of thousands of people standing in the shadow of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, many wearing cowboy hats as they gathered to watch country star Jason Aldean perform on Sunday night.

Then, from the distance, a quick cracking sound that had people seeking cover.

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“Is that ******* bullets? No way, that can’t be,” said one voice in a video captured by Paul Dumas, a resident of Pritchard, B.C., near Kamloops.

Then the cracking sound started again.

“That’s a ****** semi-automatic weapon,” a voice said this time.

READ MORE: Maple Ridge man Jordan McIldoon killed in Las Vegas shooting

In the video, people could be seen warily rising to leave the venue, but then the shooting started once more.

“It sounds like a BB gun,” one woman could be heard saying.

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Dumas was at centre stage of the Route 91 Harvest music festival, the site of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

What he and thousands of others heard was gunfire as Stephen Paddock fired from his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel.

Paddock reportedly used a “bump-stock” device, which might have turned semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic ones.

With access to at least 42 weapons, ammunition and ammonium nitrate, he killed at least 59 people and injured over 527 others.

READ MORE: Las Vegas shooting: What we know about gunman Stephen Paddock

In the video, the shooting eventually stopped, and people could be seen filing frantically out of the venue, ducking and screaming as they tried to escape.

• With files from The Associated Press