The date is never far from Josh Bitsko’s mind. But when the anniversary of Oct. 1, 2017, comes around, dark thoughts are inescapable.

After all, he was there. Bitsko, at the time a Metropolitan Police Department sergeant, was one of a handful of people who entered the gunman’s 32nd-floor hotel room at Mandalay Bay, minutes after he shot hundreds of people attending a country music festival on the Strip.

“Everybody who went up to that room came down different,” Bitsko said. “That was a normal day … until it wasn’t.”

Part of Bitsko’s effort to deal with the trauma he witnessed was to make his experiences public. His new book, “The Courage to Live,” became available Wednesday, eight years after the shooting that took lives, changed lives and was seared into the collective consciousness of

See Full Page