Gunman targeted police officers, jet fuel tanks

LAS VEGAS — The gunman who sprayed more than 1,000 rounds of bullets into a Las Vegas country music concert also took shots at jet fuel tanks and targeted responding police officers, investigators said Friday in portraying a killer who seemed determined to inflict even more carnage than the 58 he murdered.

Investigators gave more details on the chronology surrounding the shooting and pushed back against criticism they were changing their story.

Shifting accounts about when Stephen Paddock fired his first shots in his 32nd floor Mandalay Bay suite have led to questions about whether police could have done more to stop him on Oct. 1.

“In the public space, the word ‘incompetent’ has been brought forward,” Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said. “I am absolutely offended with that characterization.”

In a chronology provided Monday, Lombardo had said Paddock started spraying 200 rounds from his suite into the hallway of the Mandalay Bay at 9:59 p.m., wounding an unarmed security guard in the leg. He said Friday the security guard came to a barricaded stairwell door at 9:59 and wasn’t shot until around 10:05 p.m.

About that time, the gunman unleashed a barrage of bullets on the festival crowd. Then he killed himself with a gunshot to the head.

The timeline comes as investigators say they have yet to identify a motive behind the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

“We are establishing a timeline of this suspect’s life, his motivation and everybody associated with him throughout time,” Lombardo said.

A visual inspection of Paddock’s brain during an autopsy found “no abnormalities,” Lombardo said. He said the brain has been shipped to a facility to do a microscopic evaluation.

Lombardo confirmed Paddock intentionally opened fire on jet fuel tanks at nearby McCarran airport and said he took shots at arriving police officers, possibly to keep them at bay as police rushed to his room.