California residents can apply for aid for medical bills, funeral expenses after Las Vegas attacks
Californians who were injured in the Las Vegas attack may be able to get some monetary relief.
The California Victim Compensation Board, a state program that offers monetary support for victims of violent crimes, has released a single application process to allow people to apply for compensation from California as well as from Nevada’s program, said Julie Nauman, the board’s executive director.
A gunman opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas on Sunday night, injuring almost 500 people and killing 58.
“Help is available for survivors of those who were killed, anyone who was injured and those in attendance at the concert, as well as their immediate family members,” according to a statement the board released Wednesday. The funds can help pay for various costs, including “funeral expenses, medical bills, mental health treatment, lost wages.”
There’s a limit of $70,000 per victim in the California program, but officials from California and Nevada are working together to maximize resources for families, Nauman said.
“We want victims to know that this help is available,” she said.
California residents can apply at https://victims.ca.gov/lasvegas/ or can call 1-800-777- 9229.
Staff writer Joseph Serna contributed to this report.
Vegas shooter booked room overlooking Lollapalooza in Chicago, official says
Police said Thursday they are examining reports that the gunman who fired on a country music festival in Las Vegas also booked rooms in a Chicago hotel overlooking the massive Lollapalooza music festival, the latest new line of inquiry as investigators try to retrace the killer’s steps in the days and weeks before the attack.
TMZ reported that Stephen Paddock, 64, booked two rooms facing Grant Park, where the festival was held from Aug. 3 to Aug. 6, at the Blackstone Hotel, an upscale downtown hotel across the street, but he never showed.
“We can confirm that a reservation was made under the name Stephen Paddock, however authorities have not confirmed that this is the same person as the Las Vegas shooter,” said hotel spokeswoman Emmy Carragher, adding that the guest never arrived. “We are cooperating with the authorities on this matter.”
Lollapalooza draws hundreds of thousands of music fans every year, and this summer the shows attendees included Malia Obama, the daughter of former President Obama.
These are the video poker machines Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock frequented
At the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, the video poker machines stand at the north end of the casino, near an open court across from the black jack tables.
Stephen Paddock, the gunman responsible for Sunday’s mass shootings at a music festival opposite the hotel, liked to play this bank of machines.
Hotel staff said he’d come to the Mandalay Bay up to twice a month.
A real estate investor who also made regular money on gambling, Paddock is said to have preferred video poker. “He gambled for 20-plus years, successfully,” his brother, Eric Paddock, told reporters on Wednesday.
He’d often play $100,000 at a time, he said.
“$100,000 isn’t that much money.... He gambled that much through a machine in hours.... He’s got the highest level of membership card at a lot of these [casino] hotels. If a lot of these hotels say they don’t know Steve, they’re lying.”
It was from a room 32 floors above the Mandalay Bay casino that Paddock launched his deadly attack, killing 58 people and wounding nearly 500 others.
On the casino floor Wednesday night, though, there was little sign of the tragedy three nights earlier.
It was business as usual.
Why did it take police so long to breach Las Vegas gunman’s room? Here’s a new timeline
How long did it take Las Vegas police officers to storm into the room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino where gunman Stephen Paddock was laying down fire on a crowd of 22,000 helpless concertgoers below?
Initial reports suggested it was 72 minutes. Actually, it was 75 minutes, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Wednesday, as authorities released their first complete timeline of the Sunday night shooting that left 58 people dead and nearly 500 injured.
There was a reason for the delay, Lombardo said. Officers actually reached Paddock’s hotel room door on the 32nd floor within 12 minutes of the first shots being fired, “which is phenomenal,” the sheriff said.
The shots had stopped 10 minutes after they started, according to the new timeline, which factors in information recorded on police officers’ body cameras and closed-circuit television footage from the concert venue.
The shooting apparently halted when Paddock detected the security guard’s approach at his hotel room door and turned to shoot the guard, Lombardo said.
The first police officers arrived about two minutes after that, the new account suggests. When they saw what had happened, they evacuated nearby rooms and waited for backup from a SWAT team to enter the room. That ended up happening 75 minutes after the first shots were fired.
Paddock was already dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Here is the timeline the sheriff’s department released:
10:05 p.m.: First shots fired by the suspect. This was seen on closed-circuit television from the concert venue.
10:12 p.m.: First two officers arrive on the 31st floor and announce the gunfire is coming from directly above them.
10:15 p.m.: The last shots are fired from the suspect per body-worn cameras.
10:17 p.m.: The first two officers arrive on the 32nd floor.
10:18 p.m.: Security officer tells LVMPD officers he was shot and gives exact location of the suspect’s room.
10:26-10:30 p.m.: Eight additional officers arrive on the 32nd floor and begin to move systematically down the hallway, clearing every room and looking for any injured people. They move this way because they no longer hear the gunfire of an active shooter.
10:55 p.m.: Eight officers arrive in the stairwell at the opposite end of the hallway nearest to the suspect’s room.
11:20 p.m.: The first breach is set off and officers enter the room. They observe the suspect down on the ground and also see a second door that could not be accessed from their position.
11:27 p.m.: The second breach is set off, allowing officers to access the second room. Officers quickly realize there is no one else in the rooms and announce over the radio that the suspect is down.
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Gunman’s brother: ‘If a lot of these hotels say they don’t know Steve, they’re lying’
The interview started with Eric Paddock crying.
And then — in a rambling, televised interview that stretched for half a hour in Florida on Wednesday — Paddock held court on his brother Stephen, the gunman who attacked a Las Vegas country music festival.
He was now one of America’s foremost experts on one of its worst mass killers, and he was trying to explain reports that Stephen Paddock had gambled heavily in Las Vegas in recent months, sometimes with at least $100,000.
“We’re wealthy people,” Eric Paddock said. “$100,000 isn’t that much money.... He gambled that much through a machine in hours.... He’s got the highest level of membership card at a lot of these [casino] hotels. If a lot of these hotels say they don’t know Steve, they’re lying.”
But his brother also “didn’t love the casino,” Paddock said. “The casino was a means to an end. The casino to him was like a job in Toyota in Japan, where you live in the Toyota apartments across the street, and then you go to the Toyota factory to work. That’s what the casino was. It’s a place where you lived and they were nice to you, and you could get it paid for by playing slots.”
Paddock remembered his brother as a man who used his money to take care of his family financially. “He helped make me and my family wealthy. I mean, he’s the reason I was able to retire three years ago when I got really burned out doing the job I did,” Eric Paddock said.
“He didn’t have a lot of friends,” Paddock continued. “He was a private person. There’s a story about that he’s, ‘ohhhh, he kept his shades closed, and he didn’t talk to me for the first three times he saw me walking in the neighborhood.’ Wow. That makes him really weird, doesn’t it? He was a private guy. That’s why you can’t find out anything about him, that’s why there’s no pictures. Is he such a weirdo because he didn’t have a Facebook page and posted 50,000 damn pictures of himself every day? Who’s weird?”
He said that his heart went out to the victims and that he began crying when his son had called him that day, also crying. “I woke up this morning, crying,” Paddock said.
But, of his brother’s attack, Paddock said: “This is 100% Steve, did this by himself. People can’t seem to cope with that either. But Steve is a — was a — highly intelligent, highly successful person. He could have done anything he wanted to do. And he did. He made himself wealthy. He made us wealthy. He was a very successful person. He gambled for 20-plus years, successfully. It’s like a job to him. He did it mathematically.”
Stephen Paddock loved his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, who flew to the Philippines before the attack, Eric Paddock said. He also wired Danley money. “That’s the Steve I know,” Eric Paddock said. “That’s something that makes sense. Steve would have wanted to take care of Marilou.”
The couple seem to have met at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, where Danely was a hostess and Stephen Paddock was a “big fish,” Eric Paddock said.
“They were adorable,” he said. “Steve’s this big, she’s this tiny thing. He loved her. He doted on her.”
He added of his brother: “It was fun to hang out with Steve, because he was a rich guy who hung out in the hotels. OK? ... Him getting on a plane and flying somewhere is like you going to Publix. It’s something he does every week.”
The attack was so baffling that “I hope to hell they find, when they do the autopsy, that there’s a tumor in his head, or something, because if they don’t, we’re all in trouble,” Eric Paddock said, adding, “I’m praying for at least some data points. Because otherwise, the bug in ‘Men In Black’ put on a Steve suit and went and did this. There’s no other rationalization.”
Las Vegas gunman may have wanted to survive and escape, sheriff says
The gunman who opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas may have wanted to survive and escape his attack, but a hotel security guard who approached his door and attracted the shooter’s gunfire appears to have stopped the massacre, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Wednesday.
“His bravery was amazing,” Lombardo said of the Mandalay Bay hotel security guard, who continued to help police clear guests from the 32nd floor of the hotel even after being shot in the leg by the gunman through the door of the gunman’s suite.
Investigators also confirmed that Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite had also rented a room at the Ogden condo building earlier in September overlooking an even larger Vegas music event, the Life is Beautiful festival, featuring Gorillaz, Lorde, Chance the Rapper and other artists.
Lombardo declined to say what evidence had led him to believe that Paddock might have hoped to escape after the attack, though he confirmed no suicide note was discovered in the room.
Investigators were still trying to understand what drove Paddock and whether something triggered him in October 2016, when he began buying dozens of guns.
Officials also declined to release details of their interviews with the gunman’s girlfriend, but Lombardo said he questioned whether Paddock had managed to amass an arsenal and prepare for an attack on his own.
“He had to have some help at some point,” Lombardo said. “Maybe he’s a superguy.… maybe he’s a super yahoo, was working out all this on his own, but it would be hard for me to believe that.”
Shooter’s girlfriend: No ‘warning that something horrible like this would happen’
Attorney Matthew Lombard reads a statement for Marilou Danley after she was interviewed by FBI agents for several hours in Los Angeles.
The girlfriend of the Las Vegas shooter told FBI agents Wednesday that she had no explanation for what motivated the massacre.
Her interview with agents dashed any immediate hope that she could help unlock the mysteries of a shooting that left 59 dead and more than 500 injured.
“I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man,” Marilou Danley said in a statement read by her attorney, Matt Lombard, after she was interviewed by FBI agents for several hours in Los Angeles.
“He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this would happen,” Lombard read.
According to the statement, Paddock announced to Danley two weeks ago that he had bought her a plane ticket so that she could visit family in the Philippines.
While she was there, Danley said in the statement, Paddock wired money to her, saying it was for her to buy a house for her and her family.
The trip and money suddenly appeared to Danley to be an attempt by Paddock to break off the relationship, but she said she had no inclination he was planning to carry out the massacre.
Danley returned to the United States late Tuesday and was met by federal agents after landing at Los Angeles International Airport.
Online fundraisers collect millions for Las Vegas shooting victims and give people spaces to grieve
In the midst of mass tragedy, a new normal for collective mourning has emerged.
It’s not uncommon for family, friends and strangers to grieve together on Facebook, on Twitter and even in the comments of online fundraising campaigns. That’s been true after many recent tragedies and certainly the case in the days since the Las Vegas shooting left 59 dead and more than 500 wounded. Dozens of campaigns on the Go Fund Me website have raised millions for victims and their families, while serving as virtual memorials and tributes.
May we all remember you smiling and laughing.
You don’t know me but I was standing behind you in a group of moms.
This is a young woman who loves with all her heart.
A devoted aunt, a group of childhood friends, a sister, a brother, a fellow officer, a gubernatorial candidate -- all have launched campaigns for someone hurt or killed during the shooting on the Vegas Strip. The fundraisers have been shared widely on social media. A dip into the comments sections shows just how near and far.
I was there at the festival and left unharmed. My heart breaks for all the victims.
You are a true jewel. RIP
Sending you love, strength and well wishes from Australia.
I don’t know you, but I hope you get well soon.
We’ve known each other a long time my friend. From 6th grade to high school. I am so happy you are well.
Trump thanks doctors and police who aided Las Vegas shooting victims
President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visited doctors and patients Wednesday at a Las Vegas hospital that treated more than 100 victims from this week’s mass shooting. “It makes you very proud to be an American when you see the job they’ve done,” the president said.
Flanked by medical staff from University Medical Center, the region’s only Level 1 trauma facility, Trump applauded the emergency response to the massacre. “I just want to congratulate everybody, it’s incredible work, incredible work you’ve done,” he said.
Victims who might have died will instead be released from the hospital in the days or weeks ahead, Trump said.
Trump characterized the gunman, Stephen Paddock, 64, as a “very sick man, he was a very demented person.” Of Paddock’s motive, Trump said, “You will know very soon if we find something, we’re looking very, very hard.”
Trump also praised the “incredible job” done by police responding to Sunday night’s shooting at a country-music festival, crediting officers with stopping the gunfire from the Mandalay Bay hotel within 11 minutes. “The professionalism has just been amazing,” Trump said.
Shortly after, the president and the first lady arrived at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, where they were greeted by law enforcement officers who responded to the shooting, and where Trump again praised their response.
The couple was scheduled to return to Washington after meeting with police.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who runs the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, showed Trump the department’s operations center, where police coordinated the response to the shooting.
Trump said the first responders to the shooting had been a “real inspiration,” adding “this has been a rough time,” but the shooting could have been “a lot worse” without the help of emergency officials. Trump said he had “seen professionalism like you rarely see” and thanked them, drawing applause.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein proposes ban of ‘bump stock’ gun modifications
Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Wednesday proposed legislation that would ban gun bump stocks, which police said were used by a Las Vegas shooter this week to make semi-automatic weapons work more like automatic weapons.
“The only reason to modify a gun is to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible,” the Califormnia Democrat told reporters.
After the shooting , many Republicans said it wasn’t the right time to talk about gun laws.
“It’s premature to be discussing legislative solutions, if there are any,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.
But several prominent Republicans appear open to the idea of banning the modifiers. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Bloomberg News on Wednesday that Congress should hold hearings on whether to ban bump stocks, and North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows of the powerful House Freedom Caucus told reporters that if the modification goes around limits on automatic weapons, it’s “something that we obviously need to look at in the future.”
Concertgoer commandeered truck to take Vegas victims to hospital
As people fell to the ground, wounded in the sprays of gunfire, Taylor Winston knew he had to do something.
“People were bleeding everywhere,” Winston said. “Gunshot wounds were everywhere. Legs, torsos, necks, chests, arms — just dozens of people.”
The 29-year-old San Diego man said he realized he needed to help fellow concertgoers get to the hospital.
Along with a friend, Winston ran to a parking lot adjacent to the fairgrounds where the Route 91 Harvest festival was staged, looking for a car or truck he could commandeer. He said he knew that festival employees often left keys in work vehicles.
“The first one we opened had keys inside,” Winston said.
Over the next 40 minutes, Winston and a friend, Jenn Lewis, would transport 20 to 30 critically injured people to a hospital in the commandeered truck.
“It was a lot of chaos, but within the chaos, there was a lot of good being done and a lot of people rising to the occasion and helping others,” he said.
A roundup of the latest on the Las Vegas shooting: Most of gunman’s weapons were purchased since October
The gunman responsible for the massacre in Las Vegas first began buying guns two decades ago, a federal source said Wednesday, but the majority of the 47 guns he owned had been purchased since October 2016.
Stephen Paddock brought at least 23 weapons, mostly rifles, to the Mandalay Bay hotel room from which he opened fire on a country music concert across the street Sunday night, an attack which left 59 people dead and more than 500 injured.
Twelve of the guns were modified with “bump-fire” stocks, which are legal accessories that allow guns to fire at nearly fully automatic speed, officials said.
Meanwhile, FBI agents were slated to interview Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, in Los Angeles.
From the police scanner, a tale emerges of 72 minutes of terror
The first call came across the Las Vegas radio channel in a burst of static.
“We got shots fired,” the police officer said, in a breathless voice. “Sounded like an automatic firearm.”
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s scanner traffic, and body camera video released Tuesday, captured officers’ frantic efforts to find and stop the gunman firing into a crowd of 22,000 people from a perch high above the fairgrounds at a music festival.
From the first reports of gunshots at 10:08 p.m. Sunday, it would be 72 chaotic minutes until a SWAT team crept down a carpeted hallway on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel and blew open the hotel room occupied by gunman Stephen Paddock.
By then, the gunfire had long since ceased and Paddock was dead.
Girlfriend of Las Vegas shooter is being interviewed by FBI in Los Angeles
The girlfriend of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock was slated to be interviewed by investigators at the Los Angeles headquarters of the FBI on Wednesday morning, an official said.
Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters meeting President Trump’s plane in Nevada that the interview was to be conducted shortly.
FBI officials would not confirm the interview timing but acknowledged that the woman, Marilou Danley, was expected to consent to be interviewed by investigators.
Matthew Lombard, a Los Angeles attorney hired by relatives to represent Danley, declined to comment. He said he expected to release a statement Wednesday afternoon.
President Trump lands in Las Vegas to meet with victims of the attack at music festival
President Trump arrived in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning to meet with law enforcement officials and victims of Sunday night’s massacre at a country-music festival on the Strip.
Air Force 1 landed at McCarran International Airport at 9:37 a.m., and Trump walked out of the plane with Melania, the first lady.
They were greeted on the tarmac by Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo and other dignitaries, which were scheduled to include Republican Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, an independent.
The president and first lady were scheduled to meet with patients and medical staff at a local hospital at 10 a.m. and then meet with civilian heroes and first responders to the attack at 11:50 a.m., before an expected departure back to Washington at 1:10 p.m.
President Trump visiting Las Vegas to meet with mass shooting victims and first responders
President Trump’s visit to Las Vegas on Wednesday is his second trip in two days aimed at comforting the victims of tragedy: In Puerto Rico on Tuesday, it was victims of Hurricane Maria; in Nevada, it’s the families and survivors of a mass shooting opposite the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
Trump was scheduled to arrive at 9:30 a.m. PDT and meet with patients and doctors at a hospital treating the more than 500 people injured in Sunday’s shooting.
Later, the White House said, he was to meet with “civilian heroes” and first responders who were at the scene when Stephen Paddock , a 64-year-old gambler and real estate investor, opened fire from the 32nd floor of the hotel at a country music festival going on below.
“Well, It’s a very sad thing,” Trump told reporters Wednesday as he was preparing to leave Washington. “We’re going to pay our respects and to see the police who have done really a fantastic job in a very short time.”
As for the investigation into the shooting, he said: “Yeah, they’re learning a lot more. And that’ll be announced at the appropriate time. It’s a very, very sad day for me, personally.”
In Las Vegas, some seemed skeptical that the president’s visit would bring much comfort.
Mekhaly Rassavong, 50, was at McCarran International Airport, where Trump was to land, to light a candle at a memorial for victims of the shooting.
Standing by her silver truck, she said she was worried about Trump’s visit.
She said she doesn’t think Trump is a compassionate person.
His abrasive tweets and the comments he made Tuesday while visiting Puerto Rico, she said, made her think he may fail to show genuine compassion for Las Vegas.
Puerto Rico “lost 16 people and he’s saying their losses aren’t as bad as Katrina and that they’re messing with the budget,” she said, shaking her head. “If he’s not genuinely going to show compassion here, it’s almost like you shouldn’t be here because it’s just going to make people more upset.”
Mark Rumpeler, 58, who is a reverend and impersonates Elvis, disagrees.
“He’s going to salute the first responders and Americans who helped as he should,” he said.
Rumpeler said he’s happy that the president is visiting the city because it takes someone of his caliber to address what has happened.
“He represents all Americans, whether you voted for him or not,” he said. “I think he will strengthen America and remind us to keep rowing our boat in one direction.”
The trigonometry of terror: Why the Las Vegas shooting was so deadly
Arthur B. Alphin is well acquainted with the trigonometry of terror.
The retired Army lieutenant colonel and West Point graduate, who has a mechanical engineering degree and specialized in ballistics, has testified in many multiple-shooting cases.
What he sees so far about Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock is a patient, well-trained gunner who did not pick and choose his targets, but held to a steady kill zone centered in the middle of thousands of concertgoers.
Once the trigger was pulled, simple laws of physics and trigonometry sealed the fate of more than 500 people who would fall wounded in the ensuing fracas — 59 of them fatally.
“He had a huge area of three, four or five football fields with people standing shoulder to shoulder,” Alphin said. “He was not aiming at any individual person. He was just throwing bullets in a huge ‘beaten zone.’”
Beaten zone is an infantry term dating to World War I. Shaped like the area a searchlight casts across a flat surface, it represents the area where bullets can strike, and moves substantially with tiny changes in the tilt of the gun.
If the shooter shifted by about 1 degree, or the width of two fingers held at arm’s length, Alphin said, the beaten zone would fall outside the crowd.
“That’s all the distance you have to move and you aren’t hitting anybody,” Alphin said. “So he had to be pointing or aiming at the very center of mass and then bouncing all over with the recoil.”
> Readers show how they would rewrite the Second Amendment
From a perch 320 feet above ground in a hotel whose base was about 1,050 feet from the concert venue, Paddock was firing down the 1,098-foot hypotenuse of a right triangle — and would have to adjust his aim for the arc of the bullet over that distance.
Alphin said there was “no way” the shooter maintained such a steady kill zone by dumb luck. Steady nerves and planning are a better explanation for the casualty rate, he said.
“How did this guy get trained that well? Where did it come from?”
At least one of the 23 rapid-firing weapons authorities found in the hotel room had a bipod stand to hold it steady, according to law enforcement authorities.
Paddock also may have fitted weapons with a device to make it cycle rounds more quickly into the chamber for firing, or converted some to fully automatic firing, potentially adding as many as eight rounds per second, Alphin said.
There may also be expertise at work in deciding when to switch rifles, Alphin said. Gun barrels expand as they heat up, and the bullet can lose contact with the grooves that spin it and keep it point-forward. Without the spin, it will tumble.
“A bullet tumbling like that, good God, it will land on planet Earth but you don’t know where,” Alphin said.
Girlfriend of Las Vegas gunman, a ‘person of interest’ in mass shooting, has landed in Los Angeles
Marilou Danley, the girlfriend of the gunman who shot and killed 59 people at a country music concert in Las Vegas, returned Tuesday night to the United States from the Philippines, according to multiple law enforcement sources.
Danley was met by federal agents at Los Angeles International Airport, said the officials, who were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
Danley was not placed under arrest and it was not known when, or if, she would agree to be interviewed about Stephen Paddock, who killed himself in the Las Vegas hotel room from which he launched his deadly attack.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, whose department is leading the investigation into the shooting, on Tuesday called Danley a “person of interest” and said authorities hoped that talking with her would shed light on why Paddock carried out the rampage.
Las Vegas police release body camera footage of attack
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department released a three-minute compilation of body camera footage Tuesday night that showed the attack on a music festival from the perspective of police.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who oversees the city’s police department, said there were more than 67 body camera videos from officers at the scene.
The footage showed only a small slice of what officers saw that night and did not include victims. In one clip, officers ducked behind a cinder-block wall as the sound of fast-paced gunfire erupted.
“Go that way, go that way, go that way,” an officer shouted at civilians as they struggled to figure out where the shots were coming from.
“Mandalay Bay, coming out of the window,” one officer said.
Before the shooting, Nevada was warming to gun restrictions. What now?
As Linda Green stood behind police tape and gazed at the Mandalay Bay hotel, she thought about the months ahead — the sadness, the healing, the push for gun control legislation.
“This event will change everything,” said the 72-year-old retiree and longtime resident of Las Vegas. “Once everything settles I think we will revisit this gun control thing.”
Even before a gunman opened fire from the 32nd story of the hotel onto an outdoor country music festival, killing at least 59 people and leaving more than 500 injured, Nevadans were accustomed to political battles over gun control.
The state allows open carrying of firearms and honors concealed-weapon permits from nearly two dozen states.
But in recent years, as proposed gun restrictions have fizzled out in Congress, residents here have been receptive to state legislation imposing certain limitations. This sets Nevada apart from some of its Western neighbors — including Arizona, Utah and Idaho — where 2nd Amendment rights are rarely challenged.
‘Bump stocks’ allow rifles to act a lot like machine guns. Feds have found them to be legal
An arsenal assembled by Stephen Paddock in his Las Vegas hotel room included at least one device called a “bump stock” that modifies a semiautomatic weapon to fire rapidly, almost like a machine gun.
Fully automatic rifles are tightly controlled by federal law, and owning one without the proper permits is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in jail. But the bump stocks, which allow a shooter to fire off up to 800 rounds per minute, have been repeatedly certified as legal by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) included a ban on the devices in her failed 2013 bill to ban assault weapons, and she said Tuesday that it is time for Congress to act.
“I’m looking at how best to proceed with legislation to finally close this loophole,” she said in a statement. “This is the least we should do in the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in [modern] U.S. history. It should be our highest priority.”
Although Paddock had weapons modified with the bump stocks, authorities have not confirmed that he used those weapons in his rapid-fire assault on a music festival crowd. The publicity of the shooting has apparently sparked a run on buyers trying to find them, as company websites crashed and sellers reported they were out of stock.
Under current law and its interpretation by ATFE, the devices are permitted. Manufacturers even put the approval letters from the agency on their websites to reassure prospective buyers.
“Did you know that you can do simulated full-auto firing and it is absolutely legal?” says one Texas manufacturer, Bump Fire Systems. The 2010 letter from the ATFE says the device was billed by the company as a way to assist people “whose hands have limited mobility” to rapidly fire an AR-15 military-style rifle.
The bump stock, because it has “no automatically functioning mechanical parts” is a “firearm part and is not regulated” under gun control laws, the agency said in a June 2010 letter to the company.
Those decisions were made at an office of the ATFE called the Firearms Technology Branch at a facility in West Virginia. Richard Vasquez, former acting chief of that division, said the decision on the bump stocks was not that difficult or particularly controversial with the agency.
The reason is in the legal definition of a “machine gun” in federal law — a gun that can fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”
Semiautomatic weapons fire one shot per trigger pull. The bump stock devices work by allowing the gun’s stock to slide back and forth, and use the gun’s recoil as a way to dramatically accelerate the speed of the shots.
But in the ATFE’s view, that doesn’t make them machine guns, because technically the firing mechanism hasn’t been changed, and the shooter is still squeezing off one shot per trigger pull.
“A lot of discussion was made over it, and there was a lot of thought put into it,” said Vasquez, who retired from the government and now works as a consultant for the firearms industry.
“When when we looked at it … we could not fit it into the definition” of a machine gun, he said.
“That’s all a government agency can do, because Congress writes the laws,” Vasquez said.
Photo shows Las Vegas gunman’s hotel room
This photograph, obtained by the German newspaper Bild, shows the 32nd floor suite in the Mandalay Bay hotel where Stephen Paddock broke out windows Sunday night to open fire on thousands of people at a country music festival across the street.
Through the police crime scene tape blocking the door, what appears to be an AR-style rifle rests on the floor. It is fitted with a scope to aid long-distance shooting and a bipod for steadying the shooter’s aim.
No ammunition magazine is in the firearm, which rests by a police evidence marker.
At the bottom of the image, bullet holes can be seen in what looks like a portion of the door that has been removed. Investigators said Tuesday that Paddock had spy cameras installed inside and outside his hotel room, and that he shot a Mandalay Bay security guard through the door, wounding him in the leg.
Paddock was found dead after police entered his room.
Update: This post has been corrected to reflect that the gun was fitted with a bipod, not a tripod.
Republicans are unwilling to consider new gun safety laws as Democrats plead with Trump to intervene
Republican leaders in Congress showed no interest Tuesday in pursuing gun control legislation, leaving Democrats to urge President Trump to intervene in the aftermath of the shooting in Las Vegas.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said only Trump could change the stalemate in Congress, which has been unable to approve new gun safety bills, despite majority public support after the nation’s repeated mass shootings.
“A small powerful lobby that represents a vast minority — a very small minority — of Americans seems to have a stranglehold on the Republican Party,” Schumer said, referring to gun rights advocates, including the National Rifle Assn.
“Let’s see if he has the courage, the willpower to say, ‘I’m going to break with that small group’ and do something that makes common sense and Americans — in overwhelming numbers, Democrats, Republicans and independents — want.”
It is unclear whether Democrats will find a willing negotiator in Trump. The White House has not raised concerns over gun laws since the Las Vegas shooting, which authorities say is the nation’s deadliest, despite Trump’s interest in stricter gun measures before becoming president.
More certain Tuesday was that Republicans, who control Congress as the majority in the House and Senate, remain opposed to new legislation to clamp down on the purchase or ownership of firearms or related devices like those believed to be used by the Las Vegas shooter.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky warned Tuesday that it was “inappropriate to politicize” the issue while Americans were mourning lives lost and the investigation was continuing.
“It’s premature to be discussing legislative solutions, if there are any,” McConnell said.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said the shooting was a reminder of the importance of mental health services. He defended legislation passed by Congress earlier this year to roll back an Obama-era requirement for gun background checks for those who have a mental health conditions for which they receive Social Security disability benefits.
“Protecting people’s rights was very important,” Ryan said. “And that — that’s what that issue was all about.”
Congress this year has been considering legislation that would loosen gun ownership restrictions, particularly a measure that would eliminate a $200 transfer fee on silencers. Supporters say silencers help protect the hearing of hunters and others using firearms, but opponents warn that easier access could worsen the impact of a mass shooting.
The silencer legislation is part of a broader bill, the Sportsman’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act, or SHARE, backed by the NRA, that also would to allow gun owners to carry registered firearms across state lines and in national parks.
The bill has not been scheduled for a vote, and Ryan did not indicate Tuesday it would be shelved, as Democrats have urged Republicans to do after the Las Vegas shooting.
“That bill’s not scheduled now. I don’t know when it’s going to be scheduled,” Ryan told reporters.
Later, on Fox News, Ryan noted: “It’s a big bill. It deals with wetlands; it deals with other sportsman’s issues. It’s not on our schedule because quite frankly, we’re focused on tax reform and getting our budget moving right now.”
Las Vegas gunman had cameras outside hotel room to keep an eye on police
The gunman who attacked a Las Vegas country-music festival installed cameras outside his hotel room, including at least one in a room-service cart, to watch for the approach of police officers, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Tuesday.
Officials still haven’t offered a motive for why Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., opened fire at a concert across the street from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino Sunday night. Fifty-nine people were killed and more than 500 injured in the attack.
But additional information obtained by investigators revealed the extent to which Paddock apparently “pre-planned extensively” for the attack, Lombardo said.
One Mandalay Bay security guard, who had become separated from police, was shot in the leg through the door of Paddock’s room when he approached, Lombardo said. The security guard escaped and police surrounded the room, eventually breaking inside, where they discovered that Paddock had killed himself.
Lombardo said that Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, was still out of the country and in the Phillipines, but that authorities were hoping to talk to her soon. Some news reports, citing anonymous law enforcement officials, have said that Paddock wired $100,000 into the Philippines in the week before the attack.
How a semiautomatic rifle can be altered to fire like an automatic weapon
Police found at least 23 firearms in the Las Vegas shooter’s hotel room including at least 1 “bump-fire stock” modification.
Shock in Reno: ‘Oh my God, it’s my next-door neighbor’
It was a quiet Tuesday morning in the manicured retirement community nestled in the rolling foothills on the outskirts of Reno where Stephen Paddock and Marilou Danley lived — a scene vastly different than it was 24 hours ago.
Neighbors recounted the armored vehicles parked on the street, the men in tactical gear, the bomb squad robot rolling up the street, and the questions they were asked by FBI agents about a reclusive couple no one seems to know much about.
Susan Page, a retired financial analyst, learned the Las Vegas shooter lived in the neighborhood after she was called by a television network Monday. She didn’t even know Paddock’s name, she said — the reporter only asked who lived at the address.
“Oh my God,” she said she thought. “It’s my next-door neighbor.”
Public records showed Paddock bought the house in 2013, a tidy, tan-and-brown home in a neighborhood with wide, clean streets, crisp air and sweeping mountain views. A faded welcome mat sat outside the front door, not far from a porch swing. The only out-of-place things about the home were dark tire tracks in the driveway and a small light knocked over along the walkway.
Like others who live along Del Webb Parkway, Page said she barely spoke to the couple. In the 2 1/2 months since she moved in, she said, she saw them maybe half a dozen times in the driveway.
Page said Paddock left the house for good sometime in mid-August. She last saw Danley a week later, she said. Danley was packing up her car, piling things on the roof. Maybe she’s going camping, Page remembered thinking.
She never saw her neighbors again.
Brent Webb, a retired high school administrator, is acknowledged in the neighborhood for knowing just about everybody, thanks to his walks with his dog, Barney. Webb said in the five years that he’s lived just a few houses down from Paddock, he only saw the man once, driving out of his driveway.
He said he saw Danley just a few more times, picking weeds in the garden. She’d say hello and ask about the dog, Webb said, but that was the extent of their conversation.
“They gave no indication they’d be involved in anything like this,” he said. “‘Course, nobody knew them.”
Another neighbor, Roy Miller, said he knew something was amiss when he walked out Monday morning, getting ready to run some errands. A police officer stood down the street.
The rest of the day was a steady stream of armored trucks, bomb squad vehicles, the FBI, ATF and Reno police, Nancy Miller said. She watched as they prepared to enter the house, and worried about what they might find inside.
“Please God, don’t let the house be wired,” she thought.
When Miller heard them break down the front door, she said, she at first thought the four loud bangs were gunshots.
Authorities didn’t leave until about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, she said, packing up their trucks and the flood lights they had used to work through the night.
“We were absolutely stunned,” she said. “Everybody watches out for everybody here. That makes it even more rare that nobody knew them.”
At his local Starbucks, Las Vegas shooter remembered for berating his girlfriend
The workers behind the counter at the Starbucks inside the Virgin River Casino in Mesquite, Nev., winced whenever Stephen Paddock and his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, lined up for their usual beverages.
That’s because Paddock had a nasty habit of berating Danley in public. “It happened a lot,” Esperanza Mendoza, supervisor of the Starbucks, said Tuesday.
Their order was always the same. He’d get a venti mocha cappuccino and she a medium caramel macchiato.
Workers remembered Paddock as a tall man with a big beer belly and heavy bags under his eyes.
“He looked like he never slept because of the large bags under his eyes,” Mendoza said.
Danley stood only elbow high to Paddock, she said.
The abuse would come when she asked to use his casino card to make the purchase, Mendoza said. The card enables gamblers to use credits earned on electronic gambling machines to pay for souvenirs or food in the casino.
“He would glare down at her and say — with a mean attitude — ‘You don’t need my casino card for this. I’m paying for your drink, just like I’m paying for you.’ Then she would softly say, ‘OK’ and step back behind him. He was so rude to her in front of us.”
Mendoza said when she and the other baristas saw Paddock’s photo on television, they were shocked.
“That’s because of what he’d done and because we have been face to face with this man so many times.”
Austin Davis of Riverside confirmed as one of the 59 killed in Las Vegas massacre
At 5:50 a.m. Monday, Aubree Hennigan put out a desperate plea on Facebook. Did anyone have news about her boyfriend, Austin Davis?
He had attended the Route 91 Harvest festival and had gone missing. She had last spoken to Davis around 8 p.m. Sunday. The gunfire broke out two hours later.
“I would love to know where he is. I know nothing at all,” Hennigan wrote on Facebook.
Eventually, she got the grim news. Davis, a 29-year-old pipefitter from Riverside, was among those killed.
“My love, I can’t believe this happened,” she wrote on Facebook on Monday night. “You didn’t deserve this.”
California woman recounts her harrowing fight for survival after being hit during the mass shooting in Las Vegas
As the shots rang out and bodies began to drop around her, Carmen Alegria, a 41-year-old social worker from Shafter, was certain her time was up.
“We’re going to die here,” she thought to herself. “We’re going to die.”
Just minutes earlier, she and best friend Angelica Soto, of Lost Hills, had made their way closer to the stage to be closer to one of Soto’s favorite country singers, Jason Aldean.
Then what sounded like firecrackers went off. Soto fell to the ground in pain, shot in her left shoulder. Alegria took off the Route 91 Harvest festival shirt she’d bought the day before and pressed it to Soto’s wound.
Seconds later, Alegria was shot in her left knee. She was bleeding badly. The spray of bullets continued. She was terrified.
“The bullets kept flying. They didn’t stop,” Alegria said. “I thought for sure I’d get shot again. It was continuous. I felt like it never stopped.”
But the women — who call themselves sisters — pulled each other up, held hands and ran east, taking cover behind vendor carts until they made it to a dirt lot where they hunkered behind vehicles with other concertgoers.
“Are you guys OK? “a female concertgoer said. “I’m a nurse.”
The nurse checked Soto and told her it was just a flesh wound. She’d be OK. Alegria’s knee — gushing blood — was much worse, the nurse said. A man nearby took off his shirt, creating a makeshift tourniquet on her knee.
The shots continued.
“We have to get out of here,” Soto told Alegria.
By this time, the pain had set in on Alegria’s knee. She’d later discover that the gunshot had broken her tibia and fractured her femur. She’d later require surgery but is expected to fully recover.
“I don’t think I can run,” Alegria responded.
Soto grabbed her hand.
“Come on, girl. I’ll drag you if I have to,” Soto told her.
Alegria hobbled as fast as she could to a nearby street.
About the same time, a man who looked to be in his early 20s pulled up in a gray pick-up truck.
“Who’s hurt? Who’s hurt?” the man yelled out.
“We’ve been shot,” Alegria and Soto responded.
Two men lifted them onto the bed of the truck.
“Oh my God. We’re safe,” Alegria thought to herself.
Then more gunshots rang out.
The women scooted themselves closer to the truck’s main cab and hid their heads under an attached toolbox.
Soto recited the Rosary in Spanish. Alegria did the same in English. The women held on to each other.
They thought they were on their way straight to the hospital. Not so. The truck’s driver stopped several more times, picking up people along the way. Men grabbed the injured — many of them women — lifting them into the bed of the truck with its tailgate down.
“Bodies were literally being tossed on top of us,” Alegria said. Each crushed her leg, delivering a piercing pain.
She counted eight people in the truck bed. Many were shot in the arm. A woman with a gunshot injury to her right eye lay limp on a man. There was a lot of blood. The spray of bullets continued. The truck sped toward Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center — and the sound of gunfire finally began to fade.
‘Guess what. We have God’s favor in this town’: After mass shooting, Sin City looks for grace
Civic and faith leaders gathered before a bank of television cameras Monday night for a prayer vigil outside Las Vegas City Hall, the speakers standing on a podium with a banner that read #VegasStrong.
In many ways, the gathering was as much a statement about Las Vegas the city as it was a chance to pray over those killed in Sunday night’s mass shooting at a country music festival on the Strip. In a place known as a tourist destination, community exists, they said.
Mayor Carolyn Goodman said the music festival drew people from around the world “to enjoy our great weather and all the amenities that make Las Vegas so special.”
Today, so many people have turned up to give blood, she said, that volunteers are asking them to come back on later days.
“We are so touched by the loss of these lives and the horror of that mentally sick, horrible human being who has taken into his hands devastation and imprinted in our minds forever a day that really doesn’t belong in our fabulous, beautiful city,” she said.
Goodman said she has been contacted by leaders in other communities stricken by tragedy: the mayor of Orlando, Fla., where the Pulse nightclub shooting happened. The governor of Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook shooting happened.
Nevada state Sen. Aaron Ford (D-Las Vegas) said he saw lines of people stretched around the block to give their blood.
“Our city of lights, in our hour of darkness, still shines,” he said.
Faith leaders said evil touched this city today. They cried out to God to be present in the morgues and in the hospital rooms. They recited the 23rd Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Pastor Mike Hatch of Prayer Center Revival Church said Vegas has been known as Sin City.
“The Bible says where sin abounds, grace does much more abound,” he said. “That means, where there’s a lot of sin, there’s a lot of grace.
“Guess what. We have God’s favor in this town.”
They lit 59 candles for the dead and sang praises to God.
Chino couple describe fleeing chaos of Las Vegas shooting
At first, they thought the “bop, bop, bop” noise was firecrackers.
Then the couple from Chino saw singer Jason Aldean run from the stage.
“Get down!” Anthony Crisci yelled at his fiancee, Jessica Leonard, before throwing himself on top of her.
Everyone around them was on the ground too. In a crowd of thousands of concertgoers, it was eerily quiet.
Then it started again: “Bop, bop bop.”
People ran.
“You have to get up and run or they’ll shoot you,” Crisci told Leonard.
This LAPD officer was trained for these situations, but never thought he’d experience it as a civilian
Los Angeles Police Department Officer Joel Twycross was grabbing drinks with a friend near the back of the outdoor concert venue in Las Vegas when he heard the first pop.
Twycross initially thought it was a problem with a speaker, he said.
Then he heard it again. “That sounds like gunshots,” he thought.
Suddenly, people began running and screaming. Bullets sprayed a table in front of Twycross and his friend. They hit the ground, then took off running.
Twycross, an officer in the LAPD’s West Traffic Division with nine years on the force, was one of several off-duty cops at the concert next to the Mandalay Bay casino. Like the others, he was unarmed, since guns weren’t allowed at the concert.
As Twycross ran out of the venue, he said, he saw people pointing toward the glimmering Mandalay Bay. He could see the muzzle flashes at one of the windows.
“We train to respond to these active shooters — not to be involved in one at a random place,” he said. “You don’t show up to Vegas for a country music festival thinking this will happen.”
The officer described a frantic scene: people hiding behind metal bleachers, Las Vegas police officers shielding people with their own bodies. Twycross tried to help keep people calm and moving quickly, he said. At one point, he said, he grabbed a girl frozen in panic and told her to run.
“Let’s go,” he told her. “We need to move.”
The officer saw people around them hit the ground.
“You couldn’t tell if they were dropping because they were shot or dropping because they were ducking,” he said.
Twycross ultimately made it to the Tropicana, and then the MGM Grand -- far enough away that he felt safe.
Twycross said his captain had already asked him to talk about the shooting with other LAPD officers at roll-call meetings. His advice?
“Be mindful. Be ready. Be prepared,” he said. “Don’t ever think it can’t happen to you.”
A pastor’s lament: ‘Our people are broken, and we’re broken with them’
The sermon heard by 300 congregants at the “Vigil for Vegas” held at the International Church of Las Vegas on Monday evening did not attempt to answer the big question: Why?
“It’s too early for that,” said Tim Roberson, an associate pastor at the church on the west side of Las Vegas.
“Right now, there’s so much emotion swirling over us our response is simply this: to cry with those who are crying,” he said. “Our people are broken, and we’re broken with them.”
The service was one of many events held throughout Las Vegas and the nation to remember victims of Sunday’s attack. Prayer services and candlelight vigils were held in Roanoke, Va.; Nashville, Tenn; and Upland, Calif., to name just a few. Fans attending Monday night’s game between the Washington Redskins and Kansas City Chiefs were urged to pray for Las Vegas.
In Nevada, before the Vigil for Vegas, four pastors from the church spent several hours at the Las Vegas Convention Center, where family members were providing coroner’s officials with personal information that could help identify the bodies of the 59 people cut down in a rain of gunfire the night before.
Among them was Pastor Robyn Garcia, who was obviously shaken.
“Four of the people I assisted had loved ones die in their arms,” she said. “Let me tell you one of their stories.”
“Heather Melton, a surgeon visiting from Tennessee, told me that her husband Sonny was running right behind her after shots rang out,” Garcia said. “She felt a bullet hit him, then knock him over on top of her. She immediately tried to resuscitate him. But he died there on the ground.”
Melton was among many other survivors tending to wounded loved ones who were ordered to leave the scene, Garcia said.
“Heather kept breaking down in tears mid-sentence,” Garcia said. “She said, ‘He saved my life.’”
“So she had no idea what happened to her husband’s body,” she said. “The couple had been staying at Mandalay Bay. But as of late Monday afternoon, the hotel was refusing to let her back into their room to recover belongings.”
Of particular concern to Walter Spivey, 41, a youth pastor at the church, was “this horrific act of evil overwhelming the thoughts of children, including my own.” Nodding toward his 9-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son, he added, “I’m steering them toward prayer meetings like this one, and away from the news.”
Allie Sibley speaks at a vigil about her experiences during the Las Vegas shooting.
Facebook and Google pledged to stop fake news. So how come they promoted Las Vegas-shooting hoaxes?
Accuracy matters in the moments after a tragedy. Facts can help catch the suspects, save lives and prevent a panic.
But in the aftermath of the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday, the world’s two biggest gateways for information, Google and Facebook, did nothing to quell criticism that they amplify fake news when they steered readers toward hoaxes and misinformation gathering momentum on fringe sites.
Remembered as a loner in his hometown, Paddock did little to draw attention
The house where Stephen Paddock lived is as unremarkable as the man who once lived there.
Described by many as bland and quiet, the accused Las Vegas shooter was barely memorable to many who met him.
And the orange-hued home in Mesquite, Nev., is much the same.
Aside from a crumpled garage door that authorities ripped from the hinges to gain access to the house, the residence was tidy. There were several small trees and plants out -- otherwise all rock.
A next-door neighbor -- fed up with the news media -- put a small box alongside his driveway. It read: “Don’t block driveway, stay out of yard, don’t ring doorbell.”
One neighbor said Paddock kept to himself or went out with a girlfriend. Sometimes he’d see him eating alone at a McDonald’s.
“He was a real loner,” the neighbor said. “If he saw you a few times, he’d finally say hi.”
As the number of injured increased by the second, Nevada congressman felt ‘helpless at home’
As the number of shooting victims seemingly increased by the second, Nevada Congressman Ruben Kihuen suddenly felt “helpless at home.”
“I wanted to go and do whatever they needed me to do. I wanted to help,” Kihuen said after scores were killed or injured at a country music festival on the Strip.
At about 3 a.m. Monday morning, Kihuen and one of his staffers arrived at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, and the scene was one that you could never get out of your head, he said
“Every single bed was occupied,” Kihuen said. “Every room was occupied in the emergency room area. Every single hallway had patients on beds because they didn’t have enough space in the rooms.”
Kihuen represents the third-largest congressional district in the country by area, and the town of Mesquite, Nev., where the alleged shooter lived, is part of his district as well.
Every available bed was full, and Kihuen said he saw some victims who looked in better shape than others. But then there were gruesome gunshot wounds as well, he said.
“People were turning purple,” Kihuen said.
“What hurt me the most was when they took us to a multipurpose room where families were waiting,” he said. “They had no idea if their loved ones were alive. It was a very surreal moment.
“I can’t even imagine what these doctors were going through as these bodies were being dropped off one after the other for several hours,” Kihuen said.
Paddock had 17 rifles in room, including one modified with a legal rapid-fire device
Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter, had an arsenal of 17 weapons in his hotel room, mostly military-style rifles, according to a law enforcement source.
At least one of them had been modified with a legal “bump stock” style device that allows the shooter to rapidly fire off rounds without actually converting it to a fully automatic weapon, the source said.
The devices modify the gun’s stock so that the recoil helps accelerate how quickly the shooter can pull the trigger. The devices are legal in the U.S.
Other weapons may have been converted to fully automatic fire, and were still being examined, the source said.
Paddock had four Daniel Defense DDM4 rifles, three FN-15s and other rifles made by Sig Sauer.
Paddock apparently bought the guns legally, passing the required background checks.
At least six of the guns were purchased at one store, a Cabela’s in Verdi, Nev. A manager at the store declined to comment.
Several other weapons were purchased at Discount Firearms and Ammo, a few blocks from the strip in Las Vegas, the source said. “It’s an open investigation,” said a store employee, before hanging up.
Paddock, who lived in Mesquite, Nev., also bought some weapons at a store there, Guns and Guitars, according to a statement given by the store owner to USA Today.
“He had good-quality, high-powered rifles,” the source said.
Authorities said Monday that Paddock had used as many as 10 suitcases to transport the arsenal to his room at the Mandalay Bay and had smashed open the room’s windows with a hammer-like device.
Investigators also found more weapons at his home and are now working to track down all his gun transactions, including some at Nevada gun shows. Records show that Paddock had owned at least 30 guns at one time or another.
Country music fan tries to save wounded friend, who dies in his arms
True country music fans , Adrian Murfitt, 35, and childhood friend Brian MacKinnon, 33, traveled from Anchorage to Las Vegas to attend Sunday’s concert on the Strip.
They had moved toward front of the stage to listen to Jason Aldean, Murfitt’s favorite artist, right before the shooting started.
“It sounded like fireworks, like a cracking sound right behind us,” said MacKinnon, 33.
When Murfitt, 35, turned to what was causing the rattling noise, a bullet hit him in the neck. Mackinnon said he used a shirt to apply pressure on his friend’s neck.
With bullets still flying, MacKinnon said, an off-duty firefighter tried to clear the blood that was blocking Murfitt’s windpipes.
“He started to go blue even with the CPR,” MacKinnon recalled.”Then we heard more gunshots and people started falling.”
MacKinnon said the firefighter told him to run. “The fireman told me ‘there’s no coming back from this,’ but I told him I wasn’t leaving my friend.”
MacKinnon said Murfitt later died in his hands.
Death toll rises to 59; investigators find explosives and 18 guns at gunman’s home
Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Monday afternoon that 59 people had been killed, up from the 58 reported earlier, and 527 injured in a mass shooting Sunday night in Las Vegas.
Lombardo also said investigators found 18 firearms, explosives and several thousand rounds of ammunition in the home of suspected shooter Stephen Craig Paddock in Mesquite, Nev.
Vegas gunman identified himself as poker player, former neighbor says
Donald Judy recalls the day in 2013 when he saw a rental car parked in the driveway at what had been the vacant house next door.
He and his wife walked over and introduced themselves to the man who was moving in. He said his name was Stephen Paddock.
It was an unremarkable conversation, Judy recalled in an interview after Paddock was identified as the gunman in the bloody Las Vegas shooting.
Paddock explained he lived primarily in Nevada and was interested in finding a home in the neighborhood for his aging mother, who lived near Orlando, Fla.
“We had no reason to distrust any of it. It was normal. He was always normal,” Judy said.
Not long after their first meeting, Paddock gave Judy a key to his house and asked him to keep an eye on the place when he was gone, which was often.
“Sometimes, he would bring Marilou, sometimes he’d be alone,” Judy said, referring to Marilou Danley, his apparent girlfriend. In the two years Paddock owned the house, Judy estimates he saw the man eight to 10 times.
Judy also recalled that Paddock’s brother would arrive sometimes on a motorcycle and the brothers would ask Judy his thoughts about property values in the neighborhood. The brothers talked of buying the house on the other side of Paddock for their mother.
Paddock talked of being a poker player, once showing Judy’s wife a photo on his phone of him winning $20,000 in a game. Judy said Paddock didn’t elaborate on what types of poker he played. He also said he thought of himself as a real estate “speculator,” Judy said.
In 2015, Paddock told Judy he had decided against buying the house for his mother and then never returned.
The house soon went on the market, and Judy said he never heard from Paddock again.
Bill O’Reilly calls mass shootings ‘the price of freedom’
Bill O’Reilly, the disgraced former Fox News host who was fired after sexual harassment allegations, penned a blog post on his site about the massacre in Las Vegas that left at least 58 people dead.
“Once again, the big downside of American freedom is on gruesome display,” the post on billoreilly.com begins.
“The murderer had a number of deadly weapons in his room and you can count on the gun control debate to ramp up,” he wrote. He says he’s covered many mass shootings and that gun control will not stop them from happening.
“This is the price of freedom,” he wrote. “Violent nuts are allowed to roam free until they do damage, no matter how threatening they are. The 2nd Amendment is clear that Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection. Even the loons.”
Vegas gunman’s father: Avid bridge player, gambler and notorious bank robber
Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock’s father was a convicted bank robber who spent most of the 1970s on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, who went by the aliases “Chromedome” and “Big Daddy,” robbed a bank in Tucson in 1960, when Stephen was 7 years old.
When authorities cornered him in Las Vegas, he attempted to run down an FBI agent with his car, according to press clippings.
He later escaped from federal prison in Texas, where he was serving a 20-year sentence, on New Year’s Eve 1968. Wanted posters described him as “psychotic,” “armed and very dangerous.”
They also described him as an avid bridge player and gambler. He was removed from the list in 1977, according to the FBI web site.
Despite the escape, Paddock was paroled the following year, the Associated Press reported.
Las Vegas shooting occurred exactly two years after Oregon community college shooting
The most deadly shooting in modern U.S. history occurred two years – to the day – after a gunman opened fire at a college campus in Oregon.
On Oct. 1, 2015, exactly two years before 58 people were killed and 515 more were injured during a concert shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, a gunman opened fire at the Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore.
Nine died, not including the shooter, and seven others were wounded when Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer rounded up students in a classroom, asked if they believed in God, then killed them one by one before turning the gun on himself.
Shortly after, President Obama called on Congress to work toward passing gun control legislation, and asked Americans to vote for a change.
“So, tonight, as those of us who are lucky enough to hug our kids a little closer are thinking about the families who aren’t so fortunate, I’d ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws, and to save lives, and to let young people grow up.
“And that will require a change of politics on this issue. And it will require that the American people, individually, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent, when you decide to vote for somebody, are making a determination as to whether this cause of continuing death for innocent people should be a relevant factor in your decision. If you think this is a problem, then you should expect your elected officials to reflect your views.”
Obama had made similar statements before, and, to no avail, would echo that sentiment again a handful of times before the end of his presidency.
In the two years since the shooting in Oregon, Congress has been unable to pass gun control legislation. As Lisa Mascaro points out, House Republicans are instead on track to advance legislation that would ease firearms rules.
Gunmaker stocks climb in aftermath of Las Vegas shooting
Stock prices of the biggest firearms companies jumped Monday as investors feared the mass shooting in Las Vegas could lead to tougher gun laws.
Gun sales have soared after previous mass shootings — and in response to other current events, including the election of Barack Obama and the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who had defended a narrow interpretation of the 2nd Amendment protecting gun ownership.
American Outdoor Brands, parent of Smith & Wesson, had been trading down more than 25% so far this year. It closed Monday at $15.74, up about 3.2%.
Sturm Ruger & Co. surged 3.48%, closing at $53.50. Vista Outdoor stock rose 2.4% to $23.50. Olin Corp., which owns the Winchester trademark, soared 6.63% to $36.52.
With the exception of Olin, the companies had been faring poorly since Trump’s election, with stock prices down as much as 36% in the case of Vista.
The rise in gun stock prices during the Obama years came despite any moves toward further gun restrictions. Sales of handguns rose 287% annually from 2006 to 2013, while sales of rifles and long arms rose 166%, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
Lacey Wallace, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Penn State University, said gun sales tend to rise in the first few months after major shooting incidents, and then settle back down. The more attention an incident receives in the media, the higher the spike, she found.
“It is the fear of the event that happened for some, and the fear of gun control for others,” Wallace said.
She based her findings on a tally of criminal background checks for gun purchases, which rose after six major mass killings between 2000-2009.
Fully automatic weapons found in gunman’s hotel room in Las Vegas
Investigators found fully automatic guns among multiple weapons in Stephen Paddock’s 32nd-floor Las Vegas hotel room, according to the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff.
The congressman from Burbank, who received a briefing from FBI officials in Washington on Monday, said he didn’t know if the guns found in the Mandalay Bay Resort room were manufactured to be fully automatic or had been modified. Such weapons fire more than one round with each pull of the trigger.
Paddock killed himself as SWAT units converged on the room amid Sunday night’s carnage, officials said.
The FBI has sent investigators and crime scene technicians to help local authorities sift through the large crime scene, interview witnesses and chase down investigative leads, Schiff said.
Sheriff Joe Lombardo of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, is in charge of the investigation into the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. At least 58 people were killed and more than 500 injured in the attack targeting an outdoor country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, within view of the Mandalay.
Private citizens can legally own fully automatic weapons made before October 1986 after submitting to a federal background check and applying for a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. It is also possible to convert a semi-automatic rifle into an automatic machine gun.
Newly manufactured fully automatic weapons are more heavily regulated by ATF and can only be sold to some federal and state agencies.
So far, authorities don’t know what prompted 64-year-old Paddock, a resident of Mesquite, Nev., to repeatedly fire into the concert crowd, Schiff said. The Islamic State claimed responsibility, but Schiff said the group often takes credit for attacks it wasn’t involved in; the FBI had said Paddock had no apparent connection.
“We don’t know the motives of the shooter yet,” Schiff said.
“It’s staggering to try to wrap your mind around how many people were killed,” Schiff said. Incidents like this are made “all the more lethal because of access to automatic weapons,” he added.
Las Vegas gunman ‘only rented to people with good credit,’ former tenant says
Stephen Paddock owned an apartment complex in Mesquite, Texas, and once he bought it, management seemed to improve--Paddock insisted on renting only to tenants with good credit, one tenant said.
Richard Gehring, a 60-year-old roadway engineer, has lived for more than a decade at the Central Park Apartments complex, which the man whom police have identified as the gunman in Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas sold in 2012.
“When I first moved in, it was like two different management companies, and once it had problems, because people weren’t paying rent. Once he came in, he said he only rented to people with good credit,” Gehring said.
He said Paddock told him: “In California where I’m from, there you can’t just evict people, and in Texas if they don’t pay, you can go down to the courthouse and have them out in a few days. It kind of quieted down the apartment complex, because I guess some of the rougher people left.”
“He did a good job maintaining the place. He let the two people who did maintenance, he let them go ahead and fix it,” Gehring said, adding that subsequent owners have been more neglectful.
Gehring said Paddock “was OK to talk to...he was just a nice guy, and that was it...There’s nothing really that sets him out from anybody else.”
Chaos in Vegas: Hiding in the darkness with strangers to avoid the gunfire
When Brandon Hernandez first heard the pop-pop-pop during the concert, he brushed it off.
“What an idiot,” the 40-year-old thought. “Who’s lighting off a firecracker at the venue?”
But the firecrackers kept popping and, suddenly, the music stopped. And then the crowd started running. That’s when, Hernandez and his wife said, they knew something was wrong.
They started running too.
No one seemed to know where the gunfire was coming from. People screamed about possible shooters at neighboring casinos -- New York, New York, the Tropicana.
“When they shut the music off, the shots got louder,” Robynn Hernandez, 47, said. “You thought he was right behind you.”
She said she ran as fast as she could, ending up in the kitchen of the Desert Rose hotel, huddled behind a refrigerator. She hid with about 30 other people in the darkened room, terrified that another shooter would burst through the door. Each time they heard a noise outside, she said, they feared the worst.
Her phone was lost in the confusion; Robynn Hernandez had no idea if her husband or their friends were OK.
“I didn’t know if they were dead or alive,” she said.
Brandon Hernandez said he ended up with a group of four strangers. They frantically looked for a safe place, he said, but scrambled to find one.
“We didn’t know anywhere that was safe,” he said. “We didn’t know where the shooters were.”
Then, he said, two girls drove up in a car and told them to hop inside. They ended up about 20 minutes away from the Las Vegas Strip, he said, where he was able to call a relative to come get him.
He wasn’t able to get to his wife for hours.
Late Monday morning, hours after the gunfire erupted, the couple wore the same clothes from the night before, the purple concert wristbands still tied on their arms. Hernandez still had her cowboy boots on.
“We just wanted to come and have a great weekend. And we did,” Hernandez said, her voice shaken. “Up until then.”
Manhattan Beach police employee among those killed in Las Vegas shooting
An employee with the Manhattan Beach Police Department was among those killed in the mass shooting in Las Vegas late Sunday.
Police officials said at least four department employees attended the country music festival over the weekend, and two were injured.
The employee who was killed was identified as Rachael Parker, a police records technician. She’d worked with the department for 10 years.
‘He’s missing.’ A Riverside woman searches for her boyfriend
Riverside resident, Aubree Hennigan, 27, met her boyfriend, Austin Davis, nine years ago when she was still in high school.
Now the 29-year-old Davis, a pipe fitter for UA Local 364, is missing in Las Vegas. He had been there for the Route 91 Harvest Festival with family friends from Riverside, Hennigan said.
“I would love to know where he is. I know nothing at all,” Hennigan said. “He’s missing.”
Hennigan put out a plea on Facebook for any information on Davis’ whereabouts. She is among many people who have taken to social media hoping to learn about loved ones who attended the concert. Some families have traveled to Las Vegas in search of information.
Davis spoke with Hennigan last at around 8 p.m. Sunday. The gunfire started about two hours later.
“He just told me that Big & Rich was playing and he didn’t really care for them but they threw one hell of a concert,” said Hennigan.
“That’s all he told me.”
Dodging bullets in Vegas: ‘The gunfire just wasn’t stopping,’ concert-goer recalls
Desera Prosser wore a Garth Brooks shirt and Miranda Lambert hot-pink sunglasses and James Glass wore a Dierks Bentley hat. They’d come to Vegas for the country music festival, just as they did every year.
On Sunday, as they were listening to Jason Aldean wrap up his set, they heard the popping sounds. Fireworks, they figured.
But then everyone started running and the couple hit the ground to avoid the sprays of bullets.
“The gunfire just wasn’t stopping. So I got up and started running,” she said.
Glass, who hid behind a beer cart, said he felt a bullet whizz by his head.
Glass said the blast of bullets seemed to go on for minutes.
Prosser saw a young woman a few feet in front of her get shot in the back.
“That scared me and I just kept running and running and running,” she said.
She ran back toward MGM Grand Casino where the couple was staying, but then took refuge under an SUV when the gunfire started up again.
Finally, she got into the hotel and sprinted to her room.
On Monday, the couple prepared to leave for Naples, Fla., where they moved a few days before Hurricane Irma. Their home was damaged, with a leaking roof and a flooded bottom floor.
“This,” Prosser said, “was supposed to be our getaway.”
White House says too soon to talk gun limits or other policy responses to Las Vegas shooting
President Trump’s spokeswoman, echoing an argument often heard from pro-gun groups and their supporters, on Monday dismissed questions about policy responses to the Las Vegas massacre, saying it is too soon for such talk.
“This is an unspeakable tragedy. Today is a day for consoling of survivors and mourning those we lost,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. “There is a time and place for political debate but now is a time to unite as a country.”
Sanders did not rule out a gun control discussion, however. She told reporters in response to several questions about gun restrictions that policy issues are “something that we can talk about in the coming days.”
Trump frequently boasts of his support of the 2nd Amendment, and did so just over a week ago at a rally in Huntsville, Ala.
At the briefing, Sanders also warned against creating laws that “won’t stop these things from happening” again -- another argument often made by the National Rifle Assn. and other advocates of unregulated guns, who often are on the defensive after mass shootings.
“The only person with blood on their hands is the shooter,” Sanders said. “This isn’t a time for us to go after individuals or organizations.”
Trump, however, has a history of weighing in with policy proposals following acts of violence, including on Twitter. In tweets after last year’s shooting massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. -- previously the worst gun massacre in U.S. history -- Trump argued for the travel ban against Muslims that he proposed in his presidential campaign.
Sanders dismissed the point. “There’s a difference between being a candidate and being the president,” she said.
Sanders was unusually emotional in opening her press briefing, choking up and stifling tears as she recounted anecdotes of victims and heroes, by name, from the Sunday night horror on Las Vegas’ famed strip.
The press briefing was followed by a national moment of silence, led on the White House’s South Lawn by Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. Also there were Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, and scores of employees -- from well-known West Wing advisors to kitchen staff members.
In recent months, Nevada has been ground zero in a fight over gun background checks
As law enforcement continues to gather details on how Stephen Paddock obtained the rifles he used in Sunday’s mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, elected officials are using the incident to again call for stricter gun laws.
Nevada is no stranger to gun law reform efforts and the political battles that ensue.
Last year, voters in the state narrowly passed Question 1, an initiative that required most private buyers and sellers of guns to conduct a background check through a licensed dealer. Millions of dollars from national groups supporting and opposing the law poured into the state.
The initiative, which passed by 50.4% to 49.5%, mandated that private-party gun sales — with a few exceptions, such as transfers between family members — be subject to a federal background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is administered by the FBI.
That’s where language in the law ran into a roadblock.
In December, the FBI sent a letter to the Nevada Department of Public Safety, noting it would not conduct these checks. In its letter, officials from the agency said that “the recent passage of the Nevada legislation regarding background checks for private sales cannot dictate how federal resources are applied.”
The letter prompted the Department of Public Safety to seek guidance from Nevada Atty. Gen. Adam Laxalt.
Two weeks after the initial letter from the FBI, Laxalt, a Republican who opposed Question 1, released an opinion saying that “citizens may not be prosecuted for their inability to comply with the Act unless and until the FBI changes its public position and agrees to conduct the background checks consistent with the Act.”
At the time, Laxalt’s office also sent out a statement, stressing that “without this central feature [the FBI background check]” the initiative “cannot commence.”
To date, the initiative remains in limbo and has not gone into effect.
Under state law, the language of ballot initiatives approved by the electorate cannot be changed by the Legislature for three years.
Nevada is hardly an antigunstate. It allows opencarrying of firearms and recognizes concealed weapons permits from nearly 30 other states. The state still takes pride in its hard-scrabble, anything-goes Western heritage. But it alsohasbeenshadingmoreblue inrecent years — Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump there in 2016 — and is more open to regulations that once wouldhave been seen as an anathema.
CBS fires executive for ‘deeply unacceptable’ post after Vegas shooting
CBS Corp. fired a vice president in business affairs Monday for comments she made on social media regarding the mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas.
Hayley Geftman-Gold, wrote on her Facebook page that she was not sympathetic to victims of the shooting because, she claimed, most country music fans are Republican.
Geftman-Gold also wrote: “If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing. I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”
The comments were deleted but not before they were picked up on a number of right-wing blogs and websites. A petition was posted online that called for her firing.
A CBS spokesperson confirmed that Geftman-Gold was dismissed because of her comments.
“This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company and is no longer an employee of CBS. Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS. Our hearts go out to the victims in Las Vegas and their families,” the company said in a statement.
Lost in the chaos: Redondo Beach family searching desperately for daughter
Christiana Duarte had just started as a fan service associate for the Los Angeles Kings. It was her first full-time job since she graduated from University of Arizona in the spring with a degree in business marketing.
Now she’s missing — swept up in the chaos of the mass shooting that took at least 58 lives Sunday night in Las Vegas.
A Redondo Beach native, Duarte attended the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, family friend Hayley Mullin said. Now Duarte’s family is searching for her in Las Vegas and told Mullin on Monday morning that they still had not found the young woman they call Chrissy.
“She went to the concert and as of right now is missing,” said Mullin of Redondo Beach.
Mullin said that a friend of Duarte’s who was with her has been located at a Las Vegas hospital. Complicating matters further, it appears that even before the shooting, Duarte lost her cellphone and ID.
The family knows that “her friend has been found, but she doesn’t have her ID or phone. It looks like she lost the phone earlier and her ID had been in the back of it. “
A friend of Duarte’s went to Instagram to ask for information about her. “PLEASE if anyone has seen Chrissy reach out!!”
How to help in the aftermath of Las Vegas shooting
Whether you’re in the immediate vicinity or on the other side of the globe, you can help support the victims of last night’s violence in Las Vegas.
For those near the greater Las Vegas metropolitan area, hospitals are in desperate need of blood donations. Individuals can stop by the Labor Health & Welfare Clinic at 7135 W. Sahara Ave. in Las Vegas, or with United Blood Services at various locations in Nevada to donate today.
For those looking to help monetarily, Clark County Commission Chair Steve Sisolak has started a GoFundMe campaign for the victims of Sunday night’s shooting.
Police officers and sheriff’s deputies wounded in the attack
Police officers and sheriff’s deputies -- some on duty, others off duty -- were among the dozens killed or injured Sunday night in the Las Vegas shooting.
One off-duty officer from the Las Vegas area died, while two on-duty officers were wounded by gunfire, said Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo. Of the two wounded, one is stable after surgery and the other sustained minor injuries, the department said.
“It’s a devastating time,” Lombardo said.
Many off-duty police officers and deputies from Los Angeles and Orange counties, Bakersfield and other areas were also at the Las Vegas festival.
A Los Angeles police officer was among those wounded and was expected to make a full recovery, the department said early Monday.
Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Ralph M. Terrazas also announced on Twitter that two people from his agency were injured in the attack.
One Orange County sheriff’s deputy was severely wounded by gunshots to the abdomen and thigh, according to the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs. The wives of two deputies were also reported wounded in the attack.
Bakersfield police Officer Aaron Mundhenke was shot in the hip and went into surgery Monday morning and was expected to survive, department officials said.
Two employees with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department were struck by gunfire, the agency said. One was critically injured while the other is stable.
Ontario Police Officer Michael Gracia, 24, was among the wounded and underwent surgery Monday morning, officials said. He is listed in critical but stable condition, said Ontario Police Sgt. Jeff Higbee.
Gracia’s wife was also hurt during the incident but her injuries were considered non-life-threatening.
Do you know any of the Las Vegas shooting victims? We want to hear from you
More than 50 people were killed and at least 515 others were injured after a gunman opened fire Sunday night at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. Do you know any of the victims? We want to hear from you.
Call us at (213) 237-7072 or email nation@latimes.com.
Las Vegas gunman’s father was once on FBI most-wanted list, brother says
The brother of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock said their father was once on the FBI’s most-wanted listed, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, a bank robber who escaped from prison, was removed from the list in 1977 and arrested the following year. He died in 1998.
Eric Paddock, who lives outside Orlando, said the last time he communicated with his brother was when he texted and asked about power outages after Hurricane Irma.
Site of Las Vegas mass shooting is key venue in effort to cast city as a music-festival destination
Before it became the site of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, the Route 91 Harvest festival was one of a handful of concert blowouts aiming to burnish the Las Vegas Strip’s reputation as a live-music destination.
Jason Aldean, Eric Church, Sam Hunt, Lauren Alaina, Big & Rich, Lee Brice, Maren Morris and Jake Owen were all on the bill for the three-day, sold-out festival at Las Vegas Village, which attracted 25,000 guests a day to the same event last year.
For years, event organizers have been trying to turn the Village and the much larger Las Vegas Festival Grounds, also open-air and owned by MGM Resorts International, into preeminent destinations for music fans in a city with unlimited entertainment options.
Jason Aldean calls Las Vegas shooting ‘beyond horrific’
Tonight has been beyond horrific. ... It hurts my heart that this would happen to anyone who was just coming out to enjoy what should have been a fun night
— Jason Aldean, who was performing when shooting began
Mandalay Bay Resort puts out call for trauma counselors
Mandalay Bay Resort said it is providing crisis counselors for any guest or hotel employee affected by Sunday night’s massacre.
It sent out a tweet Monday morning asking for help.
It followed up that tweet about an hour later with further details.
Newsom, Harris call for increased gun control in response to Las Vegas shooting
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Kamala Harris called for increased gun control efforts Monday in the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas that left at least 58 people dead and more than 500 injured.
Newsom, who is running for governor, blasted President Trump and GOP leaders as he offered condolences to those who were killed and injured.
“We are heartbroken by the lives lost. We are heartbroken for their families and loved ones. We are heartbroken that we can’t pass commonsense gun laws in our nation,” he said in a statement.
“If the Republican leadership of Congress and this President continue with their moral and intellectual abandon, California has and must continue to chart the path of rationality.”
Harris said that such tragedies occur too frequently in the United States.
“We cannot simply throw up our hands or continue to justify the presence of weapons of war whose primary purpose is to kill the largest number of human beings in the shortest amount of time possible,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
“We must honestly acknowledge the epidemic of gun violence and work together, now, to curb it.”
Sheriff’s sergeant stationed outside Las Vegas shooter’s ex-wife’s Cerritos home
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Cort Bishop outside the Cerritos home of Stephen Paddock’s ex-wife. The couple divorced 27 years ago. (Michael Owen Baker / For the Times)
Outside the Cerritos home of Peggy Paddock, the ex-wife of the shooter, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Cort Bishop told reporters the two divorced more than 27 years ago.
They were married for about six years and had no children, he said.
“She hasn’t had any recent contact with him at all,” Bishop said. “It’s been many, many years.”
“She did authorize me to tell you that she will not make any statement,” Bishop said. He’s with the Cerritos sheriff’s station.
Paddock’s ex-wife is 63.
Bishop said that the shooter never lived at the Cerritos residence.
“She’s adamant 100% that she doesn’t want to make any comment,” he said. “The news media started showing up, knocking on her door...so she called us.”
GOP still plans to vote on NRA-backed legislation that eases gun restrictions
Congress has been unable, or unwilling, to approve gun control legislation after recent mass shootings — including one targeting lawmakers playing baseball — and it is unlikely to consider new bills after the attack in Las Vegas.
To the contrary, House Republicans are on track to advance legislation easing firearms rules, including a package of bills backed by the National Rifle Assn. that would make it easier to purchase silencers.
Opponents of the bill argue that making silencers more prevalent could worsen the impact of mass shootings. Supporters say silencers can prevent hearing damage among hunters.
The Sportsman’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act (SHARE Act) was introduced last month, and gun advocates hoped for swift passage. It would allow gun owners to transport registered firearms across state lines, carry guns in national parks and eliminate the $200 transfer tax on silencers.
Earlier versions of the bill had stalled under President Obama, but advocates have been hopeful that Congress will send it to President Trump’s desk to become law.
“America’s gun owners have been waiting for many years for Congress to send the SHARE Act to the president’s desk,” the NRA’s legislative arm wrote last month when the bill was introduced. “Their patience may now be rewarded with the strongest, most far-reaching version of the Act yet.”
The legislation was advancing through Congress even after gun safety advocates raised concerns that silencers could prove even more deadly in a mass shooting.
Another NRA priority is a bill that would allow gun owners who live in states that allow people to carry concealed weapons to carry them in other states, overriding state laws to the contrary. That bill has not been scheduled for a vote.
Bills toughening gun laws, a subject on which the nation has long been bitterly divided, have repeatedly stalled in Congress. Nearly all Republicans in Congress oppose new gun control legislation, and several Democrats from rural states have also voted to stop previous gun control moves.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has taken the lead on gun safety issues after a gunman opened fire and killed 20 children at a Newtown elementary school in 2012, urged lawmakers to act.
“This must stop. It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic,” Murphy said. “It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something.”
Gov. Jerry Brown, California lawmakers say they ‘stand with the people of Nevada’ after mass shooting
Fake news stories circulate after Las Vegas mass shooting
In the aftermath of the deadly shooting in Las Vegas, which has so far claimed the lives of at least 58 people, fake news stories and false information started circulating on social media.
On Twitter, rumors started spreading that multiple gunmen were responsible for Sunday’s shooting at an outdoor country music festival near the Las Vegas Strip.
Photos of a man wrongly identifying him as the attacker also quickly spread. Some of the inaccurate tweets and photos have been shared hundreds of times on social media.
Officials identified the gunman as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock from Mesquite, Nev., and say he acted alone.
Multiple photos of comedian Sam Hyde have also been circulating that falsely claim he was identified as the shooter.
This isn’t the first time that Hyde’s photos has been the center of fake news stories. In 2015, CNN mistakenly included his picture in a segment about a college shooting in Oregon.
Hoaxes about victims and missing people also have sprung up.
One Twitter user falsely claimed that his brother went missing in Las Vegas after the shooting. The tweet included a photo of a smiling young man seated at a diner. “Has anyone seen him? Please help me!” said the tweet.
The photo, however, has been circulated on social media after other tragedies, such as the terror attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. The fake plea for help was retweeted more than 500 times nine hours after the deadly incident.
Though some false reports clearly were malicious, some may have been the result of confusion. Not long after gunfire erupted at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Twitter was full of posts reporting that gunmen were spotted at several other Las Vegas casinos. Those reports were false.
ESPN reportedly decides to air national anthem before ‘Monday Night Football’ because of Las Vegas shooting
In response to the deadly shootings in Las Vegas on Sunday night, ESPN has decided to include the national anthem as part of its “Monday Night Football” broadcast of the NFL game between the Washington Redskins and Kansas City Chiefs, according to a Washington Post report.
The decision comes after the network had previously stated its intention of returning to its practice of not airing the national anthem, after showing it last week in the midst of widespread player protests in response to comments by President Trump.
In a speech on Sept. 23, Trump challenged NFL owners to fire players who do not stand during the national anthem. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started the movement last season as a protest against social injustice.
Following Trump’s comments, players and teams demonstrated in various manners before and during the national anthem that weekend.
“Monday Night Football” has broadcast the anthem during previous seasons, but its production team decided this year to use that time to talk more about the game, ESPN sources told the Washington Post.
An exception was made for the Week 1 game, which fell on the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as last week.
The network also intends to air the moment of silence that will be held before Monday’s game at Arrowhead Stadium, the Washington Post reports.
Brother of Las Vegas shooter: ‘Find out who he bought the machine guns from’
Eric Paddock struggled to find the words to explain how it felt to learn his brother, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, was the gunman who opened fire on thousands in Las Vegas on Sunday night and killed more than 50.
Standing in front of reporters on the brick entryway of his Florida home, Eric Paddock told CNN he saw no signs of potential violence from his brother. The two exchanged messages just a few weeks ago.
“He texted me to see how my mom was after we didn’t have power for five days in the neighborhood,” said Paddock, who lives east of Orlando. “He talked to her on the phone a week or two ago, then sent her a walker because she’s having trouble walking.”
He said he thought his brother had a couple of handguns in a safe and possibly a rifle, but that was the extent of his weaponry.
When asked if his brother sounded like the kind of person who could be responsible for Sunday night’s massacre, Eric Paddock shrugged his shoulders with arms opened in apparent exasperation.
“He’s never even drawn a gun. It makes no sense. He’s never hit anybody,” Paddock said. “It just makes no sense. It’s like an asteroid. ... He had no machine guns when I moved him to Mesquite. Find out who he bought the machine guns from.”
Paddock also said their father was once on the FBI’s most-wanted list. Records show Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, a bank robber who escaped from prison, was removed from the list in 1977 and arrested in 1978, according to the Orlando Sentinel. He died in 1998.
Paddock said their family was struggling to deal with the news of the attack.“We’re [messed] up,” he said, using an expletive. “I got a 90-year-old mother whose son just killed 50-plus people and now he’s dead.”
Sharon Judy, a neighbor of the suspect from Central Florida, where he lived before moving to Nevada, said she met Paddock when she moved into the neighborhood around the same time as he did.
She said he described himself as a world traveler and “professional gambler by trade” and said he once showed her a picture of himself winning a $20,000 slot-machine jackpot.
Judy said she was shocked when she heard the news on the radio and didn’t know the neighborhood connection to the shooting until reporters came knocking on her door.
“He was friendly all the time,” she said.
Read MoreUPDATE
10:10 a.m.: This story has been updated to include information on Paddock’s father and an interview with the suspect’s neighbor from his previous home in Florida.
Las Vegas casualty count rises: At least 58 killed, 515 injured
The death toll from the shooting attack in Las Vegas rose to at least 58, and the number of injured reached 515, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Monday morning.
Lombardo asked for the public’s patience as officials began the “long process” of collecting evidence and recovering bodies.
“I can’t go into the mind of a psychopath at this point,” Lombardo said at a news conference when asked about the gunman’s motive. He said law enforcement officials don’t have any record of contact with Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev.
Officials also disputed the Islamic State extremist group’s claim that Paddock carried out the attack on its behalf.
“We have determined, to this point, no connection to an international terrorist group,” said Aaron Rouse, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas office.
Paddock brought at least 10 rifles into his hotel room “on his own,” but hotel service employees didn’t notice anything wrong when they had entered his room before the attack, Lombardo said.
Lombardo used “a device similar to a hammer to smash the windows” on his 32nd-floor Mandalay Bay hotel room and open fire on the music festival across the street shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday.
Police entered the hotel and, working with security while also fielding calls from hotel guests, narrowed down what floor the gunman was on. Once on the floor, officers quickly figured out which room the gunfire was coming from, Lombardo said.
Lombardo said Paddock killed himself, but he said investigators would have to check body cameras to see if officers “engaged” with him.
Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, was out of the country when the attack happened, but she remains a “person of interest” and investigators plan to interview her when she returns, Lombardo said.
Where the shooting took place on the Las Vegas Strip
Editorial: The slaughter in Las Vegas is all too familiar, yet Americans refuse to stop it
The nation awoke Monday morning to learn that once again a man – and it’s almost always a man – has committed what appears to be the most American of acts, using military-style firearms to kill a staggering number of people. Not in self-defense, not in the heat of battle, but in pursuit of some inchoate goal. Police say 64-year-old Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, Nev., a quiet desert town about 70 miles up Interstate 15 from Las Vegas, holed himself up with at least 10 rifles on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, and rained bullets into a crowd of 22,000 people at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival across the Vegas Strip. The carnage ended when Paddock killed himself before a SWAT team blew open the hotel room door.
Paddock’s motive? Unknown at this point, but does it even matter? It was a horrific act that numbs the senses, and has in the span of a few minutes taken an unfathomable death toll and delivered pain and grief to hundreds of families. Our hearts go out to them. What motive can put such an atrocious act into a comprehensible framework? At least 58 killed and so many injured – 515 is the current estimate – that it took police most of the night to come up with that estimate as the bleeding and the near-dead flooded hospital emergency rooms. And in the sick arithmetic the country has become too accustomed to, as the number of the dead goes up, the number of wounded will come down.
Messages of shock and support have poured out in what has become an almost Pavlovian national ritual. But as a nation, do we have any more prayers and thoughts to offer? Is this, as musician David Gray once sang, just so much meaningless movement of the jaws? We will hear shortly – count on it; it’s another part of our sickness – that this is not the right time to talk about gun control, and about our armed-to-the-teeth culture. But this is exactly the right time. As is tomorrow. And next week. And next month and, if we ever regain our collective sanity, on election day.
We will hear shortly – count on it; it’s another part of our sickness – that this is not the right time to talk about gun control, and about our armed-to-the-teeth culture. But this is exactly the right time. As is tomorrow. And next week. And next month and, if we ever regain our collective sanity, on election day.
— The Times Editorial Board
It was stunning to read the flash news updates when the death toll passed 50 that the Vegas mass shooting broke an American record, out-slaughtering Orlando, Fla.’s, Pulse nightclub rampage last year. Does Las Vegas get a medal for that? Is this a challenge to the deranged in other cities to do even better?
Former in-law of Las Vegas shooter says, ‘I’m still in shock.’
Scott Brunoehler remembers his former brother-in-law Stephen Paddock as a smart, fun-loving guy.
Paddock was a young man thriving in Southern California when he was married to Brunoehler’s sister, Sharon, in the 1970s and early 1980s, his former in-law told the Los Angeles Times Monday.
“Oh he was a smart guy, like an accountant or something. He had a good job, he was a great guy actually,” Brunoehler said. “We used to go water skiing together.”
Brunoehler, 62, said he hasn’t spoken to Paddock since he divorced Brunoehler’s sister.
“It was pretty mutual, they just kind of grew apart,” Brunoehler said.
When the group was in their 20s and 30s, Paddock would take them out on his boat at Castaic Lake or Buena Vista Lake in Kern County, Brunoehler said.
“He seemed like a normal, good guy. I don’t remember anything bad back then at all,” he said. “I’m still in shock.”
Brunoehler learned of the shooting Sunday night when his friend called to say his friend’s daughter, who was in Las Vegas, was wounded in the attack.
He turned on the TV, and then his niece called him.
“She said, ‘Recognize that name?’” Brunoehler said. “They were all telling me who he was.”
Suspect’s brother on gunman: ‘No religious affiliation. No political affiliation’
Streets remain closed; some bodies remain where they fell
Roads around the concert grounds are shut down by a major police presence.
At the Desert Rose Resort on Reno Avenue, a man’s body lay in the driveway, his legs sticking out, his body covered with a sheet. A young man stood nearby, just staring. A second body lay on the sidewalk.
There are so many crime scenes, a Las Vegas police officer said, there are going to be closures for a while.
On nearby Koval Lane, there were discarded tennis shoes and clothes and blood on the street — an apparent roadway triage with a box of medical rubber gloves and bloody gauze.
Blood splatters line the sidewalks.
Watch President Trump’s full remarks on the Las Vegas shooting
President Trump gives his remarks about the Las Vegas shooting on Sunday.
Islamic State claims responsibility for Las Vegas massacre
The Islamic State extremist group Monday claimed responsibility for the attack in Las Vegas, the deadliest shooting massacre in U.S. history.
At least 50 people were killed and more than 400 were taken to hospitals, authorities said.
Amaq, a news agency affiliated with Islamic State, quoted an unnamed security source who said that 64-year-old Stephen Paddock was a “soldier of Islamic State” who had “executed the attack in response to the calls to target the nations of the Coalition.”
The statement was released on Islamic State-linked channels on the messaging service Telegram.
The U.S. leads a coalition of Western and Middle Eastern countries battling the extremist group in Iraq and Syria. Islamic State has long exhorted its followers to conduct attacks in Western countries, saying they are the best way for would-be jihadis residing in the West to help the group.
Islamic State publications provide instructions on how to plow vehicles into crowds and cause the maximum amount of carnage.
Yet it remained unclear what connection Paddock, a resident of Mesquite, Nev., about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, had to Islamic State.
A follow-up statement from Amaq said the attacker “had embraced Islam a few months ago.”
Trump calls for unity and prayer in the face of ‘pure evil’
President Trump gives his remarks about the Las Vegas shooting on Sunday.
President Trump called for prayer and unity in the face of “an act of pure evil” in a somber address from the White House Monday, hours after a mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert that killed dozens of people.
The shooter “brutally murdered more than 50 people and wounded hundreds more. It was an act of pure evil,” he said.
Trump praised first responders, saying “the speed with which they acted was miraculous and prevented further loss of life.”
He spoke specifically to the victims and their families suffering the loss of “a parent, a child, a brother or sister.”
“We cannot fathom their pain,” he said. “We cannot imagine their loss.”
He said he would travel to Las Vegas on Wednesday.
The comments came after the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, with more than 50 dead, and one of the biggest tests for Trump during a period of national concern and grief.
During such tragedies, which have visited every modern presidency, Americans typically expect a period of unity as the president seeks to provide comfort.
Trump, reading from a teleprompter in the Diplomatic Reception Room, appeared downcast as he read. He said many Americans would be feeling anger and conceded that “the answers do not come easily.” But he urged resiliency.
“Our unity cannot be shattered by evil. Our bonds cannot be broken by violence,” he said. “It is our love that defines us today and always will forever.”
The president quoted scripture, Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
The tone was a far different one than Americans are used to seeing from Trump, who tends toward provocation in even the most dire tragedies.
Trump was a candidate during the June 2016 Pulse night club shooting in Orlando that killed 49 people. At the time, he tweeted extensively, criticizing President Obama and Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival.
“What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning,” Trump tweeted following Orlando. “Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough.”
He also used the event to vindicate his false assertion that Muslims in New Jersey held mass celebrations following the Sept. 11 attacks. “I was right,” he tweeted after Orlando.
By contrast, after the school shooting at Newtown, Ct., in December 2012, Trump initially praised the response by Obama, putting aside his political differences.
“President Obama spoke for me and every American in his remarks in #Newtown Connecticut,” Trump tweeted at the time.
8:18 a.m.: This post was updated with additional quotes from President Trump and additional background.
Vegas attack is the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history
Correction: A previous headline read, “Vegas attack is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.” We’ve updated to include “modern.”
Video from scene shows horrifying moments when gunman opened fire
More than 50 people were killed and at least 400 others injured after a gunman opened fire Sunday night at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, authorities said.
What we know about the suspect
Police said the suspected gunman in Sunday night mass shooting in Las Vegas, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, a resident of Mesquite, Nev., was killed in the hotel room from which he was firing at the crowd.
“Right now we believe it’s a solo act, a lone wolf attacker,” Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said.
Paddock had been in the Mandalay Bay hotel since Sept. 28 and at least 10 rifles were found in the room, authorities said. He had no prior criminal history, they said.
At least 50 people were killed and more than 400 sent to hospitals, authorities said.
Investigators entered Paddock’s home in Mesquite early Monday morning. The motive for the shooting is not yet known.
Where to donate blood to help the victims
Police officers among those killed or injured in Las Vegas shooting
Multiple police officers, both on and off duty, were among those killed or injured after a gunman opened fire on a music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday night.
One local off-duty officer died, while two others who were on duty were wounded by gunfire, said Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo. Of the two wounded, one is listed as stable after surgery and the other sustained minor injuries, he said.
Many off-duty police officers from Los Angeles, Orange County, Bakersfield and other agencies traveled to Vegas for the show, authorities said.