Las Vegas massacre probe focuses on gunman’s arsenal, history
Justice Department to fast-track process for tracing guns
– The Las Vegas gunman who killed 58 people and himself in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history stockpiled weapons and ammunition over decades, and meticulously planned the attack, authorities believe. But what led Stephen Paddock, 64, to unleash the carnage remains largely a mystery.
“What we know is that Stephen Paddock is a man who spent decades acquiring weapons and ammo, and living a secret life, much of which will never be fully understood,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters on Wednesday night.
Lombardo said he found it hard to believe that the arsenal of weapons, ammunition and explosives recovered by police in their investigation could have been assembled by Paddock completely on his own.
“You have to make an assumption that he had some help at some point,” the sheriff said.
Before his Las Vegas attack, Paddock booked rooms at a Chicago hotel that overlooked the site of August’s Lollapalooza music festival, USA Today reported on Thursday, citing an unnamed law enforcement official. It was unclear if Paddock ever used the room or was in Chicago during the festival, the newspaper quoted the official as saying.
“We are aware of the media reports and have been in communication with our federal partners,” Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said about the report.
Some 489 people were wounded when Paddock strafed an outdoor concert with gunfire on Sunday night from his 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel on the Las Vegas Strip before taking his own life.
Police recovered nearly 50 firearms from three locations they searched, nearly half of them from the hotel suite. Officials said 12 of the rifles there had been fitted with so-called bump stocks, allowing the guns to be fired almost as though they were fully automatic weapons, which are largely illegal in the United States.
Like other recent mass shootings, the incident stirred the debate in Washington over regulating firearm ownership, which is protected by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
Republicans, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, have fought off Democratic calls for stricter background checks or federal limits on magazine size following past mass shootings. But congressional Republicans said they would be willing to investigate the bump stocks.
Investigators were examining the possibility that Paddock’s purchase of over 30 guns in October 2016 could have been precipitated by some event in his life, Lombardo said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday there remained no evidence indicating that the shooting spree had been an act of terrorism.
Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, was questioned by the FBI on Wednesday and said in a statement that she had been unaware of Paddock’s plans.
“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 was going to happen,” Danley, 62, said in the statement released by her lawyer, Matt Lombard.
Danley, who returned late Tuesday from a family visit to the Philippines, is regarded by investigators as a “person of interest.” Lombard said his client was cooperating fully with authorities.
An FBI official in Las Vegas, meanwhile, said no one had been taken into custody.
An Australian citizen of Filipino heritage, Danley said she flew back to the United States voluntarily “because I know that the FBI and Las Vegas Police Department wanted to talk to me, and I wanted to talk to them.”
She shared Paddock’s home at a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, northeast of Las Vegas, before traveling to the Philippines in mid-September.
Investigators questioned her about Paddock’s weapons purchases, a $100,000 wire transfer to a Philippine bank that appeared to be intended for her, and whether she saw any changes in his behavior before she left the US.
Danley said Paddock had bought her an airline ticket to visit her family and wired her money to purchase property leading her to worry he might be planning to break up.
Paddock’s brother, Eric, told reporters the $100,000 transfer was evidence that “Steve took care of the people he loved” and that he probably wanted to protect Danley by sending her overseas before the attack.
Discerning Paddock’s motive has proven especially baffling as he had no criminal record, no known history of mental illness and no outward signs of social disaffection, political discontent or extremist ideology, police said.
Also on Thursday, the US Justice Department announced plans to fast-track the process for tracing guns used in shootings back to the original purchasers as part of a broader effort to crack down on violent crime. Justice officials said the effort was part of a new mandate that US attorneys must devote more time and resources to violent crime.
Normally it can take the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives five to six days to trace a gun used in a crime back to the original buyer, a Justice official said.
If a ballistics evaluation by the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, or NIBIN, determines that a certain gun was used in a shooting, the bureau must call the manufacturer, distributor and retailer to track down the original buyer. Once they locate the store, agents must comb through forms until they locate the one with the gun’s serial number.