US billboards ask for tips on gunman motive
LAS VEGAS: Tourists coming to gamble and party on the Strip will soon find something other than bright lights welcoming them to “Fabulous Las Vegas.” Billboards will serve as a stark reminder that investigators remain stumped about what drove a gunman to mow down concertgoers from a perch in a highrise casino hotel last Sunday. “We still do not have a clear motive or reason why,” a frustrated Clark County Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said Friday. “We have looked at literally everything.”
Investigators have chased 1,000 leads and examined Stephen Paddock’s politics, his finances, any possible radicalization and his social behavior - typical investigative avenues that have helped uncover the motive in past shootings. “We have been down each and every one of these paths,” McMahill said. “We all want answers.” The FBI announced that billboards would go up around the city asking anyone with information to dial 800CALL-FBI. “If you know something, say something,” said Aaron Rouse, agent in charge of the Las Vegas FBI office. “We will not stop until we have the truth.”
Paddock, a reclusive 64-year-old highstakes gambler, rained bullets on the crowd at a country music festival from his 32nd-floor hotel suite, killing 58 and wounding hundreds before taking his own life. McMahill said investigators had reviewed voluminous video from the casino and don’t think Paddock had an accomplice in the shooting, but they want to know if anyone knew about his plot beforehand. In their effort to find any hint of his motive, investigators were looking into whether he was with a prostitute days before the shooting, were scrutinizing cruises he took and were trying to make sense of a cryptic note with numbers jotted on it found in his hotel room, a federal official said.
The US official briefed by federal law enforcement officers wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The official said investigators were interviewing other call girls for information and looking into at least a dozen cruises Paddock took in the last few years, including one to the Middle East. It is unusual to have so few clues five days after a mass shooting. McMahill noted that in past mass killings or terrorist attacks, killers left notes, social media postings and information on a computer, or even phoned police.
“The lack of a social media footprint is likely intentional,” said Erroll Southers, director of homegrown violent extremism studies at the University of Southern California. “We’re so used to, in the first 24 to 48 hours, being able to review social media posts. If they don’t leave us a note behind or a manifesto behind, and we’re not seeing that, that’s what’s making this longer.” What officers have found is that Paddock planned his attack meticulously.
He requested an upper-floor room overlooking the festival, stockpiled 23 guns, a dozen of them modified to fire continuously like an automatic weapon, and set up cameras inside and outside his room to watch for approaching officers. In a possible sign he was contemplating massacres at other sites, he also booked rooms overlooking the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago in August and the Life Is Beautiful show near the Vegas Strip in late September, according to authorities reconstructing his movements leading up to the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.