Gunman checks police on camera
A gunman kills at least 59 people at a country music festival planning the massacre put the camera in a room and nearby hall so he could see it. The police shut down.
A gunman kills at least 59 people at a country music festival planning the massacre put the camera in a room and nearby hall so he could see it. The police shut down.
“It was pre-planned, extensively, and I’m pretty sure that he evaluated everything that he did in his actions, which is troublesome,” Joseph Lombardo, sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said at a briefing on Tuesday afternoon (Oct 3).
He said one of the cameras was hidden in a food service cart in the hallway outside the suite. Law enforcement officials said the purpose of that camera was apparently to give the gunman a video feed that would warn him when police were closing in.
Lombardo also said the department has opened an investigation into the unauthorized release of images that show the crime scene, including the bullet-riddled door to the suite used by the gunman Stephen Paddock. Police said Paddock fired at hotel security before taking his own life.
Lombardo also said the department has opened an investigation into the unauthorized release of images that show the crime scene, including the bullet-riddled door to the suite used by the gunman Stephen Paddock. Police said Paddock fired at hotel security before taking his own life.
In these photographs, obtained by the German newsmagazine Bild on Tuesday, a portion of Paddock’s two-room suite is visible. A gun with a scope and a stand can also be seen inside the room, just behind yellow crime-scene tape crisscrossing the door.
23 GUNS IN HOTEL ROOM
Authorities described a grim amount of preparation. Police said Paddock arrived on Thursday, three days before the shooting, at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip. He took more than 10 suitcases into his suite, officials said. Paddock aroused no suspicion from hotel staff even as he brought in 23 guns, some of them with scopes.
One of the weapons he apparently used in the attack was an AK-47 type rifle, with a stand used to steady it for firing, people familiar with the case said.
Officials recovered another 19 guns as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition and the Chemical tannerite, an explosive, at Paddock’s home in Mesquite, Nevada. They also found ammonium nitrate, a chemical that can be used in bombmaking, in Paddock’s vehicle, Lombardo said.
He apparently had set up a security perimeter behind him while firing round after round into the crowd below – another indication of the level of preparation he put into the attack. Such a setup would have made it easier for Paddock to know when he was close to being confronted by law enforcement.
When police breached his hotel room door and stormed inside, they found him already dead, with blood spread out behind him, mixed in with the empty shell casings on the carpet. He had apparently pointed a silver, black-handled revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Police said they believe Paddock was a “lone wolf” attacker, though they were still interested in speaking more with a woman named Marilou Danley who lived with him in Mesquite, a little more than an hour outside of Las Vegas on the Arizona border.
Danley, Paddock’s 62-year-old girlfriend, was found outside the country and was not involved in the shooting.”We still consider her a person of interest,” Lombardo said Monday.
He said investigators also are exploring a report that Paddock attended a different music festival in September. People close to the investigation said that in the weeks before the attack, Paddock transferred a large amount of money – something close to US$100,000 – to someone in the Philippines, possibly his girlfriend. Source: Straits Times
