An Australian man believes he was staying in the room next to the gunman who killed at least 50 people when he fired on a crowd from the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel.
Brian Hodge says he was staying in room 32134 of the Mandalay Bay Hotel while the gunman Stephen Paddock was in room 32135 as he fired at people at an outdoor country music festival.
"It was a machine gun from the room next to me," he was quoted by News Corp Australia.
"My floor is a crime scene. They killed a security guard on my floor."
He said he fled the hotel and hid outside.
"I was just hiding waiting for police to come get us. We were hiding in the bushes outside waiting for the police," he said
A NSW family caught up in the tragedy have told of the "scariest night of our life" and how they were forced to walk with their hands up across an empty casino.
Kevin Comerford, Nicole Shipman and her daughter Maddy Aspinall, 14, from Grafton in NSW, were in Las Vegas for one night only after a dance academy tour in the US had finished.
They rode in a helicopter over the Grand Canyon on Sunday afternoon and then returned to their hotel, about two blocks from the shooting scene.
The family headed out to see the city in the evening and witnessed a rush of people running down the street and police and ambulances swarming.
Mr Comerford said it took them about an hour to get safely back to their hotel and they bunkered down in the convention centre with other guests.
"This was supposed to be a one night special stop because we'd never been to Las Vegas before ... we were planning to live it up for one night and we've had probably the scariest night of our life," Mr Comerford told AAP on the phone.
Mr Comerford said Maddy had coped well with the ordeal.
"That is until we got to the hotel and the police had us walk through the empty casino with our hands above our head and it became very, very real for her then," he said.
Australia's Consulate General in LA is making urgent inquiries with local authorities to determine if any Australians have been injured or killed.
People unable to make contact with loved ones should phone the DFAT emergency hotline: 1300 555 135, or +61 2 6261 3305.
