Media reports describe moments of heroism among the mass panic.
Gunman Stephen Paddock fired at least 150 or more automatic rifle shots from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip at 10:08 Pacific Time Sunday night, killing 58 people, including at least one police officer. The shooting injured at least 527 other concertgoers.
Details are still emerging about the mass shooting, as police investigate Paddock’s hotel room at the Mandalay Bay and his home in Mesquite, a city 80 miles north of Las Vegas. Authorities already say that the Mandalay Bay tragedy is the largest mass shooting in the history of the United States.
Paddock is said to have fired an automatic or semi-automatic weapon into the crowd of the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a 3-day concert. 22,000 people were attending the concert at the time of the attack, so mass panic ensued when concertgoers realized they were being shot at. First responders and bystanders helped wounded as the shooting took place, or got others to safety.
Country singer Jason Aldean was onstage at the time of the shooting. Videos attributed emerged on Twitter and YouTube depicting the panic at the concert as people began to realize that a shooting was occurring, while TV networks broadcast multiple videos filmed of the crowd reaction.
Stephen Paddock: Thought to Be “Lone Wolf”
Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said that Stephen Paddock was known to the Metro Police, because of previous incidents. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department did not give information on what manner of law enforcement issues Paddock had caused in the past.
Metro Police sent several SWAT teams to confront the shooter in his hotel room soon after the shooting began at 10:08 pm. Officers can be heard saying they were pinned down in their attempt at confrontation. Around midnight, the LVMPD said, “One suspect is down.”
Joe Lombardo declined to speculate on Stephen Paddock’s motive for the shooting. Paddock was a 64-year old resident of Mesquite, Nevada, which one expert on mass shootings described as an “outlier” among shooters. There is zero evidence so far that Stephen Paddock, described as a white male born in 1953, had ties to foreign terrorist groups. According to Mediatite, police believe Stephen Paddock to be a “lone wolf” attacker.
Marilou Danley a “Person of Interest”
For a time, LVMPD said Marilou Danley was a “person of interest”. It later was learned that Marilou Danley was the 62-year old live-in girlfriend of Stephen Paddock. After an hours-long search for Ms. Danley, police announced on Monday morning that she had been detained by authorities. It is thought Danley will provide a great deal of background information and context to the shootings, if she cooperates with investigators.
Little else is known about Stephen Paddock at the time. Metro Police are said to be searching Paddock’s home in Mesquite, about an hour and a half up I-15 in the Virgin River valley, yet still in Clark County. The couple’s Hundai Tuscon and a Chrysler Pacifica Touring are thought to be items of interest to police, too.
Stephen Paddock’s Motives
Fox & Friends reported that the Las Vegas Police have discounted that the mass shooting was terrorism-related. MSNBC Law Enforcement Expert Jim Cavanaugh discussed the possible motives a mass murderer might have. Cavanaugh said, “It’s hard to put all shooters into one bag…What gets in these guys’ heads is, ‘Someone has done ’em wrong’. It could be society. It could be Las Vegas. It could be certain people he’s seeing in front of him. It could be race.”
“There’s some hate or revenge he wants to wreak on these people, unless there’s a terror motive or connection for political reason or gain, like ISIS or Al Qaeda…The sheriff said he’s not seeing that.”
“So if you take that away — the political terror motive — then you get into the motives of hate, power, and revenge. This is partly a power motive. He’s going to an elevated position to take a lot of life.”
Jason Aldean Las Vegas Concert Video
Evan Schreiber posted a 20-second clip of the stage at the Jason Aldean concert as the shooter began to rain down fire on the concertgoers. The video gives some sense of what happened, but is less graphic than other videos aired on television or posted online.
Harrowing video of mass shooting during @Jason_Aldean set of #Route91Harvest Festival in #LasVegas. #MandalayBay pic.twitter.com/gaXgDBbZKV
— Evan Schreiber (@SchreiberEvan) October 2, 2017
Schreiber later tweeted that the entire Las Vegas Strip had been shut down. MSNBC noted that Mandalay Bay was still under lockdown, with elevators not working. MGM Resorts, which owns Mandalay Bay, released a statement giving its condolences and stating that hotels would be under lockdown by police until further notice.
