Las Vegas gunman crafted a meticulous plan to rain carnage
SHOOTER’S GIRLFRIEND BACK IN USA Cops eager to interview Marilou Danley, who had been in the Philippines, in order to learn what was going through Paddock’s mind
LASVEGAS: Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock’s motives for perpetrating the worst mass shooting in modern US remain a mystery, but authorities said he seemed to have planned it meticulously, surrounding himself with surveillance cameras watching his surroundings for approaching police officials.
Paddock, a 64-year-old retired accountant, carried 23 weapons — some of which were modified to work as automatic rifles — in 10 suitcases to his 32nd floor hotel room, after checking in on September 28, hanging a do-notdisturb sign outside his door.
“It was pre-planned extensively, and I’m pretty sure that he evaluated everything that he did in his actions, which is troublesome,” Clark County sheriff Joe Lombardo said on Tuesday.
But the reasons for his shooting dead 58 people and wounding more than 500 remained unclear.
Investigators hoped to find something from his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, who they spoke to after her arrival from the Philippines on Tuesday. Lombardo said that at a minimum, she might shed some light on what was going through the mind of the gunman, who killed himself as the police prepared to enter his room.
As the US struggles to come to terms with yet another mass shooting and revisits the vexatious issue of its lax gun laws, President Donald Trump, who visits Las Vegas on Wednesday, said that “we’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by”. He supports gun-rights.
Authorities said Paddock owned 47 firearms — 23 were found in the Las Vegas hotel room, 19 were at his home in a retirement community in Mesquite town, and five were recovered from another house.
He had amassed this mini-arsenal over the years, buying them legally from well-known gun retailers in California, Texas, Utah and Nevada, authorities said. Retailers have told reporters he had cleared every and all background checks, and had looked and seemed fit. His relatives have said he was known to like guns, but they were surprised about the automatic weapons.
From his hotel room, Paddock opened fire sometime after 10 pm, using 12 rifles modified to shoot in automatic mode. They were outfitted with something called a “bump stock” that allows hundreds of rounds to be fired per minute, much like a machine gun. Undersheriff Kevin Mcmahill of the Las Vegas police said he fired into the crowd for nine to 11 minutes.
Paddock also seemed to have kept an eye on law enforcement officers, using three surveillance cameras — one in the peephole in the door to his suite, and two in the hallway outside, according to Lombardo. At one point he shot through the door, hitting a security officer on the other side.
In the end, with police officers closing in, the shooter put a gun in his mouth and shot himself.